Tyreek Hill and Rashee Rice: A look at two men the NFL is presenting as victims
Photo courtesy of All-Pro Reels/Wikimedia Commons
Although it did not happen during a Bills game, I am sure that many of us are aware of what happened to Dolphins star wide receiver Tyreek Hill during the Dolphins-Jets game on Sept. 30, 2025. When lunging for a pass, Hill collided with Jets defensive lineman Malachi Moore, causing the impact of Moore’s body weight to gruesomely dislocate Hill’s left knee. The graphic video shows Hill’s foot pointing in a direction no human foot should ever point. It's an unsettling video that made me wince for reasons unrelated to the now-ruined fantasy football lineups out there.
As awful as his injury was, there is a different recording of Hill that I find more disturbing. In an 11-minute long video released to the press in 2019, Hill’s ex-fiancée Crystal Espinal confronts him over the abuse of their then 5-year-old son. Espinal confronts Hill regarding him punching the child in the chest and beating him with a belt, saying, “He is terrified of you.” I would have expected the boy’s father to feel upset by these horrible accusations—but Hill’s response was to tell Espinal, “You need to be terrified of me too, b*tch.” This video was released after the boy was removed from the couple's care after suffering a broken arm, which Hill denies involvement in.
In 2014, two years before his entrance to the NFL as a member of the Kansas City Chiefs, Hill pled guilty to domestic abuse after attempting to strangle Espinal, who was at that time pregnant with the child previously mentioned. In 2016, the Chiefs signed Hill for over two million dollars in a four-year rookie contract; in 2019, they greatly increased that to a three-year 54 million dollar contract. It's an interesting coincidence how in both years Hill was proven to be a serious domestic abuser, the NFL, with full knowledge of his conduct, handed him millions of dollars.
Hill is not the only player representative of this problem. Many NFL players can get away with things that would cause anyone to be fired from a normal job. And not only do they get away with it—the NFL expects us to continue to support and identify these men as members of a team that means something to us.
Another example of this can be found in the case of Chiefs wide receiver Rashee Rice, a skilled player for the team that is in the middle of a six-game suspension for violations of the NFL’s personal conduct standard. This consequence is incredibly light, and Rice is only facing it because of the publicity of his case. In March 2024, Rice was racing against a friend on the highway with his Lamborghini, reaching a speed of 119 MPH before colliding with the median wall, causing a four-vehicle pileup. While there were no casualties, some victims suffered serious bodily injury. Due to Rice facing criminal charges and admitting guilt, the NFL suspended him from six games in the regular season.
It satisfies me to see that the NFL is holding him accountable, even though that punishment is egregiously gentle, considering Rice could have killed people. What is frustrating is his team's reaction to this. Far from denouncing Rice’s actions, on Sept. 14, several members of the Chiefs, including high profile players such as Tyquan Thornton and Travis Kelce, wore shirts reading “FREE 4” in reference to Rice’s jersey number. Chiefs head coach Andy Reid, when questioned about this insensitivity, stated, “I know these guys love Rashee and they feel for him sitting out here. And so I think it's no more than that. I just think that those guys, they love the kid and want him to feel part of it in their own way.”
Kelce, Thornton, Reid, and other representatives of the NFL feel bad for Rice. They “love the kid.” But the kid in question is a 25-year-old man. The 36-year-old Kelce and 67-year-old Reid should especially be more mature, but it's clear that there are many things that NFL culture values more than maturity.
Hill and Rice are microcosms of a wider issue the NFL faces—their players foul and potentially dangerous behavior in their personal lives. Worsening this greatly, the NFL does not seem to care about this either—they are fine with hiring domestic abusers and serial endangerers, giving them millions and millions of dollars, and then building their teams’ support systems to protect these dangerous men. The NFL wants us to pity its players when they are injured like Hill or punished like Rice, even when it ignores many of their abusive, dangerous personalities.