Mike Florio on Tyreek Hill: NFL 'Has Made a Conscious Decision Not to Act'

The NFL has yet to formally act in response to the disturbing audio of a phone conversation between Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Tyreek Hill and his fiancee Crystal Espinal being leaked publicly.

Hill tells Espinal in the recording, "You need to be terrified of me, too, bitch."

In an article published Sunday, Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk argues the NFL is simply trying to bury the story by not placing Hill on the Commissioner Exempt list.

He wrote, "The league hasn't acted because the league doesn't need to act. Also, because the entire Personal Conduct Policy mechanism flows from a desire to manipulate P.R. in the NFL's favor, the league has made a conscious decision not to act, in order to keep the Hill story from becoming bigger than it already it is."

Florio continued:

"That's not a report, per se. It's a reflection of the basic application of common sense. If the NFL were to put Hill on the Commissioner Exempt list, it would spark an Associated Press story that would be carried by every newspaper and related website in the country. People who may have missed the news of the Tyreek Hill audio—news that was completely ignored by NFL Network when it surfaced on the first night of the draft and mostly ignored by ESPN and ABC—would now be aware of it. Obviously, news of something this bad wouldn't be good for the NFL."

The timing of the audio leak was hardly ideal for the NFL from a public relations standpoint, as it dropped the same day as the first round of the NFL draft, one of the league's biggest nights of the year. But the league's inaction since the audio was released has been questionable at best. 

Hill already pleaded guilty to domestic abuse after punching and choking Espinal in December 2014 while she was pregnant, though the charges were later stricken from Hill's record after he completed three years of probation.

Hill's home was investigated twice in March 2019, including after his three-year-old son suffered a broken arm, though neither Hill nor Espinal were charged. In the released audio, however, Espinal said that Hill would punch his son in the chest when he cried and claimed Hill's son said his father hit him.

After the phone conversation went public, the Chiefs said Hill would be kept out of team activities for the "foreseeable future," though they haven't addressed the issue publicly beyond that. The Johnson County District Attorney's Office has since reopened its investigation into Hill.

But beyond Roger Goodell briefly talking about the situation at the draft, the league has remained mum on Hill.

"Well, you should wait and get the facts," Goodell said on ESPN's predraft show, per Emily Caron of SI.com. "That's the first thing you should do. I mean, you know, they don't have any information that they're willing to share with us. When you get the facts, then you make a decision about how it fits into our personal conduct policy. But you don’t rush to judgment, and you don't make a decision without having those facts."