Baltimore Ravens Release Ray Rice, NFL Bans Him Indefinitely

This morning, the video everyone had been waiting for finally leaked. TMZ dropped video early Monday morning of Ray Rice and his wife (fiancée at the time) Janay inside an elevator at Atlantic City casino Revel, showing Ray punching Janay's lights out, literally. Knocks her out cold.

That it happened is perhaps not news, since video of Rice dragging her limp body out of the elevator has been out there for months. But seeing the raw video of an NFL player rendering his wife unconscious is startling. Already serving a two-game suspension for the domestic violence incident, the Baltimore Ravens announced Monday via Twitter that they have released Rice.

The NFL followed that up with its own action — banning Rice from the league entirely, indefinitely.

Of course, neither the Ravens nor the league deserve a pat on the back in this case, considering the pitiful penalty initially slapped on Rice, and the ineptitude with which both parties handled the fallout from Rice using his wife as a punching bag — which included the team tweeting out shit like this and the league suspended another player for a full year for smoking weed (CBA be damned).

Rice will not collect any of the millions of dollars he was scheduled to earn. Details on the salary implications for Rice, from ESPN:

Ravens coach John Harbaugh was expected to talk Monday night after practice. Rice had three years remaining on his contract at $4 million this season, $3 million next season and $3 million in 2016. The Ravens will not owe Rice any money.

Is Rice's NFL career over? Hard to say, since the NFL is one of the most forgiving leagues on planet Earth. But given his wane in production in recent years, and his almost-definite absence for the next year or longer (he turns 28 in January), it's probably the end of Ray's run in pro football.