Advertisement

Here's how Adrian Peterson is key to Greg Hardy's appeal of 10-game suspension

Starting Thursday, Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson could bolster the Dallas Cowboys. Not in a trade, not on a football field and certainly not in a Cowboys uniform. Instead, Peterson will play a featured role as legal fullback, with Cowboys defensive end Greg Hardy tucked in and following right behind him. That's the path Hardy and the NFL Players Association will try to follow, as they attempt to squeeze through the hole Peterson punctured in the league's penalty system.

Greg Hardy (Getty Images)
Greg Hardy (Getty Images)

Hardy and the union will attempt to overturn a 10-game suspension imposed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, arguing against the league in front of arbitrator Harold Henderson on Thursday morning in Washington. The NFL suspended Hardy in April after a league investigation determined that he had used physical force against his former girlfriend on four occasions and didn't cooperate with investigators. Combined with Hardy's 15-game absence last season on the commissioner's exempt list, in which he was paid, the additional 10-game suspension effectively means the NFL has taken the stance that Hardy deserved a whopping 25-game suspension for violations of the personal conduct policy.

Whether that stands to reason will fall on Henderson, the same arbitrator who upheld the NFL's indefinite suspension of Peterson earlier this year, only to have that decision vacated by a federal judge. While the league's charges and the legal circumstances differ broadly from what Peterson went through when facing a child abuse charge, there is a key similarity in sanctioning that the NFLPA will argue on Hardy's behalf. Specifically, that for the second time, Goodell applied new personal conduct guidelines and penalties to a player for alleged acts that occurred when a prior system was in place.

Under that argument, Peterson became one of the few players to challenge the NFL's discipline and have a federal judge disagree with the league's stance. In essence, the NFLPA argued that after Peterson pled down his child abuse charge, the NFL used a new standard when it subsequently ruled that the running back would be suspended indefinitely.

Goodell determined that Peterson would remain suspended indefinitely after his legal case was resolved. Conversely, the NFLPA argued that Peterson had already served his suspension on the commissioner's exempt list (time served under previous guidelines) and that Goodell had erred by extending the punishment via a new (and seemingly ever-changing) personal conduct code.

The case went to arbitration under Henderson (a former NFL executive), and he ultimately upheld Goodell's ruling. But Peterson went one step further, taking the league to federal court, where he scored an unexpected win. Federal Judge David Doty disagreed with Henderson and the NFL, and remanded the entire legal dumpster fire back to the arbitration table. The NFL was forced to go back to the drawing board and come up with another reason for why Peterson's suspension should fall under the new personal conduct guidelines.

That day never came. Peterson was reinstated by the league before the two sides could go back to arbitration.

Still, a crack had seemingly been created for Hardy. Like Peterson, he had gone onto the commissioner's exempt list in 2014 for alleged offenses that occurred under a previous iteration of the personal conduct policy. So when the NFL dropped an additional 10-game suspension on him – rather than time served under the previous personal conduct code – the stage was set once again for a fight between the league and the union.

And that's where we find ourselves Thursday. As with Peterson's case, the NFLPA is expected to argue in arbitration that Goodell used new personal conduct penalties when giving Hardy a 10-game suspension, rather than time previously served. On the other side, the NFL is expected to mount its attack on multiple fronts, noting that while it found Hardy used violence against his former girlfriend, the league also determined multiple other personal conduct offenses. Effectively, the league will argue that Hardy aggravated the personal conduct policy on many fronts and thusly received a heightened suspension that would have applied under either the new or old personal conduct policy.

The twist in all of this? Harold Henderson.

After seeing one of his decisions knocked down by a federal judge, there is a question of whether Henderson will again take an NFL-friendly posture in terms of personal conduct violations. For him to rule in the league's favor again, he's going to have to agree that while Hardy already served a 15-game suspension last season, his multitude of offenses alleged by the NFL warrant another 10 games. And he's going to have to rule that in a manner that will ultimately stand up in federal court, since that's the route Hardy will go after seeing Peterson's success.

This is the fight that will unfold. The union says Hardy is being unfairly held to a standard that didn't exist when he ran afoul of the NFL. And the NFL says he committed so many personal conduct infractions that it doesn't matter which system is applied – either one would have warranted the same suspension.

If Henderson determines Hardy's suspension should be cut down considerably (which is a possibility), the NFL isn't expected to appeal. That means Hardy could be back on a football field earlier than anyone expected. Possibly even the first game of the season. But if Hardy loses, he'll tuck in behind Peterson's lead once more, and follow the running back's path into federal court.

If that happens, we'll see another new chapter of the NFL's fluid system of justice: a specific outline of what determines when an NFL player is worthy of a 25-game suspension.