With all the chatter surrounding the surprise suspension of Buffalo Bills special teams ace Sam Franklin Jr. for spitting at Las Vegas Raiders tackle DJ Glaze, I saw a lot of speculation on the video and the lack of well… anything that it showed at all. “How can they suspend him with no evidence?” Or “Is it a he said, he said situation?”
Well, it sounded like a fun way to merge my full-time job with my football work. I’m not in a glamorous field mind you, but as part of my career I am a trained investigator
and have been involved with plenty of investigations over the years. This set off to be an explainer on civil investigatory process, but along the way I found out that there was actually quite a bit more to the issues between Sam Franklin and DJ Glaze than have been reported.
Investigative process
I have a massive disclaimer to start with. What follows is how things would play out if I were in charge of looking into LoogieGate. If the NFL has a competent system, they likely did something similar. That said, the NFL hasn’t always displayed the highest level of competence in these matters, so there’s no guarantee they’ve done any of this. Let’s begin!
In the world of Skarekrow, due process is a real thing. With C.J. Gardner-Johnson, you had very direct video evidence of his infraction which makes the disqualification and punishment a pretty easy matter. With Sam Franklin Jr., the video is inconclusive which means we’d need to dig into the complaint in different ways. But you can rest assured, I would NEVER have issued a suspension without an investigation first. So let’s set the stage for how I would have done things.
Everything starts with the complaint. In this case it was likely something like “During the last extra point attempt, Sam Franklin spit on me.” We have a time stamp and a couple angles to work from which is where my video begins, checking the angles.
They’re very much inconclusive, even with the ultra-slow motion. However, it is clear there was some fracas between the two meaning there’s definitely a chance of spitting. That means we need other evidence, and one of the most plentiful will be testimony.
As you can see from the short video, it’s not remotely a “he said, he said” affair. More like a “he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said, he said…” well you get the idea. Due to Franklin engaging with Glaze you have a large group of people’s attention. The one pause shows everyone I think is reasonably looking to see what’s going on. The final pause shows how much people have gathered to see what’s going on. I would also add that people in hearing range might be useful to.
This isn’t a complicated interview either. The suspension was issued on Wednesday, which meant Monday and Tuesday gave pleeeeenty of time to talk to people and look for more evidence (assuming the NFL did). Here’s an idea of the question list for something like this (remember that at this point there’s no indication of what occurred so witnesses are coming in cold):
- Tell me about what happened between Sam Franklin and DJ Glaze.
- What do you know about anything unusual going on between them?
- I was told something unsportsmanlike occurred between them, tell me everything about what you saw between them.
- Did Franklin do anything to Glaze? If so, what?
- Did Sam Franklin spit on DJ Glaze? Follow up questions as needed such as “How do you know that?” or “What did you see/hear?” and prompts to continue if needed such as “and then what happened?” or “and how did [person] respond?”
Now comes the harder part, judging evidence for conclusions. The following is a real exercise I do with investigators to demonstrate weighing testimony and creating reports/conclusions with carying confidence levels.
You obtain the following statements:
Jane – “The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the flowers are red.”
Suzy – “The sky is blue, the grass is green, and the flowers are purple.”
Tom – “The sky is blue, the grass is orange, and the flowers are yellow.”
This leads to the following conclusions:
“The sky is blue”
“The grass is likely green”
“It cannot be determined what color the flowers are.”
Now if you get the chance to go photograph the dang grass and flowers, you go do that but as we see with the video evidence in our spitting case you can’t always get that definitive view of the world and testimony and other evidence fragments are all you get.
For civil matters, the word “likely” is significant as they’re generally held to a standard of “preponderance of the evidence” which is basically a fancier version of the idea of “likely.” Based on the evidence what’s the most probable thing that occurred. Not PROVEN, but probable. In the clip I have about 20 decent to great witnesses. I bet I can make a really good conclusion if I talk to everyone. In my examples above, Franklin could be found guilty with two of the three conclusions (the flowers being the “who the hell actually knows” result where the default should be innocent).
I don’t have the authority to investigate fully though unless Roger Goodell reads this, likes the cut of my jib, and hires me on for a very lucrative contract that he should totally actually do. Since that hasn’t happened at the time of me writing this, I don’t actually know what everyone saw and heard so Sam Franklin’s guilt or innocence remains a question mark.
That said, there is ONE more thing I would typically do before I speak to witnesses. And this thing I actually was able to do AND after I did it, I stumbled on some veeeeeery interesting facts.
There’s more to the story than Franklin and his saliva
There’s a really fun thing about testimonial evidence: It’s almost never perfect. One of the most toxic things in the universe in my opinion is the human inclination to automatically assume that a person giving incorrect information is lying. It’s not that people don’t lie, mind you. Generally speaking though it’s not as common as most people think and inaccuracies occur due to normal lapses in memory. I could give a dissertation on this subject, but I won’t today.
Instead, here’s the short version and how it applies here. If the complaint came in as the “last” extra point of the game, you start there. That said, I wouldn’t personally immediately trust that it was the last one, especially after looking at the last one and not seeing anything definite.
What if it happened on the SECOND to last extra point? Let’s face it, the circumstances between the two plays might be nearly identical. What if it was a field goal? That’s a pretty similar set of circumstances too. We don’t need to examine every play of the game. If Josh Allen is on the field, then Franklin and Glaze aren’t for instance. But Raiders kicking extra points or field goals could blur together.
So I looked at those plays (Raiders extra points and field goals), starting with the last and moving backward in time based on the idea that the complainants recall of events being at the end of the game should be considered first. And you know what? I found out a lot more than I thought I would. I originally assumed all I’d do is be able to say I couldn’t confirm spitting on similar plays, and while that is accurate to what I found…
Well let’s look.
On the kick before the one Franklin reportedly was spitting during (extra point in Q4), there’s not much to note. That’s exactly what I assumed I’d find. A handful of plays that didn’t tell me all that much. The field goal in Q3 was the same. Still, I needed to do my due diligence, right?
The field goal as time expired in the second quarter had me perplexed though. Sure, DJ Glaze is wrapped around Michael Hoecht, but I didn’t see anything all that crazy about what Glaze was doing. Nothing to really elicit the dramatic pointing at Glaze that Franklin was doing.
Then I went back one more kick. To the field goal right before the two-minute warning. To the play where DJ Glaze, well after the play is over, shoves Michael Hoecht to the ground. The first time Franklin is fingerpointing.
The animosity from that play likely (there’s that word again) carried over throughout the game. Looking at Glaze on the final extra point attempt, I don’t know if he tapped Franklin in the genitals on purpose. It looked like an accident. But now I’m less sure. More importantly, I can understand why Franklin wasn’t giving him the benefit of the doubt. And what about the XP right before it? It’s hard to tell, but did Glaze pull Franklin to the ground?
Now, the last thing I want to do is be dismissive of Franklin possibly spitting on someone or looking like I’m justifying it. Two wrongs don’t make a right. However, two wrongs should also both be considered in the final story. The earlier actions from Glaze could be mitigating factors, or simply also in need of punishment/remedy.
At the end of all this, I’m not any closer to determining if Franklin spit on anyone. But we do have a much better picture of how the day went between the teams and that there’s a lot more to the story than we first though.
