According to Ezekiel Elliott’s attorneys, his six-game suspension over a domestic violence case has been upheld, but he will be allowed to play in the first game of the season because of the decision timing. The hearing on Tuesday lasted for two hours, and Elliott’s attorney Jeffrey Kessler said to the judge that arbitrator Harold Henderson sustained the suspension.
At the beginning of the hearing, NFL attorney Daniel Nash stated that Elliott would be allowed to play the game on Sunday against the New York Giants because the ruling came too late for it to be enforced this weekend. Kessler said that they were “extremely disappointed with Mr. Henderson’s inability to navigate through league politics, and follow the evidence.”
The US District Judge Amos Mazzant said that he would rule on Elliott’s request for a temporary restraining order by Friday. It was early August when the decision came to suspend the Dallas Cowboys RB but despite the fact that prosecutors in Columbus, Ohio decided not to pursue the case which involved Elliott’s girlfriend. Elliott supposedly had physical confrontations with his ex-girlfriend Tiffany Thompson, and the league said that there was “substantial and persuasive evidence.”
Zeke will play for the Cowboys again starting October 23. Based on the testimony we heard during Elliott’s appeal hearing last week, his ex-girlfriend Tiffany apparently had an affair with Elliott’s former teammate Lucky Whitehead. ‘He and I started talking over social media,’ Thompson said, according to the NFL players’ union’s investigative report. ‘We weren’t really dating. Ezekiel found out, and I blocked Lucky from my phone.’
Elliott confronted Thompson about her dating “some guy” who turned out to be Whitehead. When Zeke was asked about Whitehead, he responded that he was furious and that Thompson continued sending Elliott messages where she hinted at having an affair with Elliott’s former teammate. Elliott said that she harassed him even after the relationship ended. The personal conduct policy gave Commissioner Roger Goodell authority to suspend players for at least six games in domestic cases, no matter the conviction.
