Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers placed on Commissioner’s Exempt list following arrest
The safety and captain was arrested and charged with assault and strangulation.
FOXBOROUGH — The NFL on Wednesday placed safety and captain Jabrill Peppers on the Commissioner’s Exempt list, three days after he was arrested and charged with assault and strangulation.
Peppers may not practice or attend games while on the list. He did not play in last Sunday’s game against Miami while also dealing with a shoulder injury.
Peppers appeared in Quincy District Court on Monday. A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 22, though Peppers’s appearance has been waived.
Peppers was arrested early Saturday and charged with two felonies (assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, and strangulation or suffocation) and two misdemeanors (assault and battery on a household member and Class B drug possession).
He is accused of choking a woman multiple times and pushing her head against a wall before forcing her from his apartment. While Peppers was being processed, officers discovered a small bag of white powder in his wallet, which Peppers said was cocaine; it tested positive as the substance, per the arrest report.
The Commissioner’s Exempt list is the league’s version of paid leave, in which the player receives his weekly checks but does not count on the roster. If Peppers is suspended by the NFL, it would allow the Patriots to void the $4.32 million guaranteed salary in his contract for 2025 and release him without any financial penalty.
The NFL has a formalized process for handling off-field incidents pertaining to violence against women, developed in 2014 after the Ray Rice incident.
The NFL will stay out of the way of police investigations, but it tracks cases closely and often conducts supplemental investigations headed by Lisa Friel, a former New York City prosecutor. The NFL sometimes will punish a player even if the formal charges have been dropped.
The league’s personal conduct policy states that violations pertaining to felony criminal assault or battery, domestic violence, or dating violence have a baseline penalty of a six-game suspension without pay, with commissioner Roger Goodell able to increase or reduce the punishment based on relevant factors. Choking is listed as one factor that could increase a suspension.
Without Peppers, Kyle Dugger will anchor New England’s safety group. Jaylinn Hawkins, Marte Mapu, and Dell Pettus will continue to play significant roles. Dugger did not play Sunday because of an ankle injury suffered in Week 4, causing Mapu and Hawkins to be on the field for 100 percent of the defense’s snaps. Pettus also logged a season high.
Coach Jerod Mayo called their performance “something to build off of.”
“It was very encouraging,” Mayo said. “Those guys grew up [Sunday]. I like the way they played. Hopefully here going forward, they continue to develop at that pace.”
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