In its investigations of the Ray Rice domestic-assault case from earlier this year, the NFL never asked the casino in which the assault took place for a copy of security tapes, according to a new report by TMZ. Had the NFL done so, the casino would have handed over the tapes, per the report. Instead, the tapes were leaked over a period of several months, culminating in Monday's unsettling footage that resulted in Rice's release from the Ravens.
The NFL has maintained that it had not viewed the most significant moments of the assault, the time when Rice strikes his then-fiancee Janay Price and renders her unconscious, until Monday. (This, despite earlier indications to multiple media outlets that the NFL indeed had seen the footage.)
Why hadn't the NFL seen the footage? They asked law enforcement but did not receive it, according to a statement released Monday: "Security for Atlantic City casinos is handled by the New Jersey State Police. Any videos related to an ongoing criminal investigation are held in the custody of the state police. As we said earlier today: We requested from law enforcement any and all information about the incident, including the video from inside the elevator. That video was not made available to us and no one in our office has seen it until [Monday]."
However, TMZ's sources indicated that the casino had made copies of the tape for both law enforcement and Rice's attorneys, but the NFL never asked either of those two entities for copies of the tape. There are, presumably, three possible rationales here:
1. The NFL is lying about not having seen the incriminating tape.
2. The NFL had not seen the incriminating tape because its investigators did not think, or know, to ask sources other than the police for a copy.
3. The NFL knew it could have checked with other sources, but chose not to do so in order to preserve plausible deniability and avoid bringing a harsher penalty down on Rice initially.
As a result of Monday's revelations, Rice was swiftly cut from the Ravens and suspended by the NFL. While his particular situation has been resolved for the moment, the question of what commissioner Roger Goodell knew and when he knew it remains a critical one.

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or find him on Facebook or on Twitter.
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