As it turns out, the Commanders did not know that there were allegations coming against Brandon McManus for sexual assault when he was signed earlier this offseason, but the team swiftly moved to release McManus on Sunday, about a week after a lawsuit was filed and a few days after it went public, at which time the team released a statement saying they would investigate.
And much like Eric Bickel and JP Finlay, respectively, did earlier in the day, Danny Rouhier hopes, as terrible as it sounds, that the release is not simply based off unfounded accusations, and sadly understands that playing a ‘fickle position’ probably didn’t help McManus.
“This is a strange thing to hope for, right, but just bear with me: my hope is that the team found something out,” Danny said. “And if they found something out where they know a little bit more than the public does, which I assume they would to a degree, and know enough where this is the smart call, then, okay. As the facts play out, I’m sitting here ignorant; I have no idea if he did or didn’t, only that his lawyer vociferously says no, and the lawyer for the accusers vociferously says. I wasn’t there, and there’s only a couple of people that really know the truth, so we're on the sidelines waiting for it to play out. And, the reality of our world is that the process of the allegation, the process of public opinion, the scarlet letter is one of the things that we just simply can't tolerate, and we move quickly when you're not the star quarterback or the defensive end that's gonna get 15 or 16 sacks on the season. There’s not a lot of patience there at the kicker spot; guys get cut because they missed three kicks in practice or didn’t kick a touchback. It’s the most fickle position in the sport, so if there's something hanging over your head, I understand it, but it's one of those things that makes me a little uncomfortable.”
“I just hope that they did their due diligence and that they dug in on this, whether they found something or not,” Grant replied. “I hope that they did some type of thorough investigation, because the threshold in this case formally for an investigation is at the league level, not the team level. But, when the team comes out initially and made it clear they were taking this matter extremely seriously and looking into it, I viewed that as a little bit of them kicking the can down the road so that they could continue to employ McManus in the short term., and figure out how it plays out legally and how the league's gonna dive into this. But they didn’t want to do that, they obviously decided to pounce – so they either found something, or thought that the juice wasn’t worth the squeeze, and didn’t want to be dragged into this serious issue and it wasn’t worth standing by a kicker. But I really do genuinely hope there was a legitimate investigation, because the most important thing is that we find out what actually happened, and that if two people were assaulted, that Brandon McManus is held accountable for doing something awful – and if he did this, it’s a guy that doesn’t deserve to play on Washington's team, or any team, if he did assault two members of society.”
And that said, GP agrees he hopes the Commanders got something, because ‘the allegation can't just be the reason that you're done.’
“That's the case in society a lot of the time, or in the court of public opinion, and there's no stopping that – and that's okay,” Grant said. “If someone wants to change their opinion on you because of an allegation, I'm not telling anyone how to think, but I get that to an extent – but it's different when we're talking about your career being over, or you getting in real trouble, and that's what's always been difficult for me; let's thoroughly vet these things and let's treat these serious situations very, very seriously, but they went from last week saying we're gonna look into this to, as of yesterday, he's gone. So, I just have to assume that their search didn't go very well for Brandon McManus.”
“Yeah, and as facts play out and information becomes public, if he’s guilty of these things, it’s gonna sound like we’re defending him – but we’re not, we stand ignorant,” Danny replied. “We have no idea what happened, and I don't know how anybody could you read an accusation, and if that's all you read, it sounds really bad. It sounds terrible, in fact.”
Take a listen to their entire discussion above.
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