Chad Kelly's 'last-chance' CFL reinstatement sparks massive backlash

We’re halfway through the Canadian Football League’s season, but the league’s reigning Most Outstanding Player hasn’t played a down yet.

That seems likely to change in the near future, though, with CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie announcing Sunday that Toronto Argonauts’ quarterback Chad Kelly has been reinstated after a nine-game suspension following off-season allegations of workplace sexual harassment against a former Argonauts’ strength coach.

Those allegations were initially made in a lawsuit filed in February against both the team and Kelly following that coach’s exit from the Argos. The lawsuit claimed she was fired after resisting advances from Kelly. The lawsuit was eventually settled, but it led to a three-month independent investigation commissioned by the CFL (after some initial delay ) that corroborated three of the six claims against Kelly.

That investigation led to the league suspending Kelly for at least nine games (half of the regular season) for an “unequivocal violation” of the league’s gender-based violence policy. That suspension also came with an insistence on Kelly attending mandatory counseling and meeting other conditions. But he and the team wound up facing further media criticism for the decision to have him participate in rookie camp (league suspensions don’t prevent players from practicing) until they eventually backtracked .

Since then, Kelly hasn’t been around the team in person. But Sunday saw him cleared to rejoin the Argonauts (albeit on a “last-chance agreement,” with mandatory conditions he must continue to meet). Here are statements on that from the CFL and the Argonauts :

But Kelly’s return to the league has received a great deal of criticism. Some of that has included the lack of (at least public) punishment for Argonauts’ assistant general manager John Murphy, who, according to the lawsuit, responded to the plaintiff’s reporting harassment by “stating that [she] should not have spoken to [Kelly] and that she has now ‘opened a can of worms that didn’t need to be opened.”

Here’s some of the discussion around Kelly Sunday:

There are several factors to consider in this story.

One is that while the suspension for at least nine games was one of the longest seen in the CFL (actual suspensions have been rare, primarily for on-field matters, and mostly limited to a game or two ), it was a half measure. Since a 2014 move made to keep Ray Rice out (although it’s unclear if Rice ever was seriously interested in playing in Canada), the CFL commissioner has unilateral authority to say a player cannot play in the league.

A full ban of a player from the CFL has not happened very often. As of the ban of Johnny Manziel in 2019 , it had occurred just five times, with all of those about various domestic violence and/or sexual assault charges. (In Manziel’s case, however, that was about him not following conditions the CFL imposed on him in relation to a domestic violence situation from his college days, and he said this year he deliberately failed a drugs and alcohol test to void his CFL contract so he could return to the U.S. with the AAF). But Ambrosie absolutely could have fully banned Kelly. While that would have drawn some criticism (especially given Kelly’s status as reigning MOP), a ban would have had some support given the alleged nature of Kelly’s actions and the corroboration of some of them by the league-commissioned investigation.

Instead, the league went for a half-measure of a nine-game suspension, which bothered both those who wanted Kelly gone and those who found that punishment harsh by the CFL’s past standards.

The other discussion here has been about the response from both the Argonauts and Kelly. The conversation here would have been wildly different if the team had handed down their own suspension for Kelly (including barring him from those practices), announced public punishment for Murphy and others over the lackluster internal response discussed in the lawsuit, given a full public apology to the affected former coach (there have been some partial ones, but they haven’t been great), and publicly announced and impacted organizational reforms to ensure nothing like this ever happened again.

The discussion also would have been different if Kelly had publicly apologized at any point before now. Instead, he’s refused to talk to the media but has been combative on social media, including with a (later-deleted) response to the lawsuit eight days later .

And Kelly has been controversial on social media in other ways since then, including comments following Argos’ interceptions and suggestions (since deleted) that he was watching critics. But he hasn’t posted any level of apology there. And, as noted, he hasn’t spoken to the media. So the only level of apology he’s offered is the “I am sorry for my actions” in the Argos’ statement above (which, it should be noted, they didn’t even post to their website , just their media relations Twitter/X feed. At least the CFL posted a story here).

It also should be noted that this is far from the first controversy to emerge around Kelly. The nephew of Pro Football Hall of Fame QB Jim Kelly, he was a four-star recruit out of high school and ranked as one of the top QBs in his class, leading to him heading to Clemson. But he drew comment even before going there , from calling out a player he’d compete with on Twitter to releasing a self-titled rap song , and he was dismissed from the Tigers in 2014 after a heated confrontation with coaches during the spring game.

Kelly wound up at East Mississippi College (of Last Chance U fame), then at Ole Miss, and found success at both stops. But he was arrested before joining the Rebels over fighting with bouncers outside a Buffalo nightclub (he eventually pled guilty to disorderly conduct), and he was arrested and pled guilty to trespassing charges for breaking into a couple’s residence following a 2018 Halloween party while with the Denver Broncos. He had seemed to have things going better in the CFL and played at a great level in 2023, leading to that MOP award. But the lawsuit, and its subsequent corroboration by that investigation, has cast a long shadow over him.

It’s going to be interesting to watch how Kelly’s CFL return goes. The 5-4 Argonauts are third in the four-team East Division, and they haven’t received great quarterback play in his absence, so there’s undoubtedly some on-field potential for them from this move. However, there are also a lot of potential negatives around it, as shown from the reaction above (which is only a small part of the comments criticizing Kelly seen Sunday). And the CFL’s half-measure of a suspension rather than a ban may wind up satisfying no one.

[ CFL.ca ]

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