The Buffalo Bills have a crisis on their hands. And some fans have been swift to respond that if the Bills don’t take action, they will.
For the Buffalo Bills, it was an unworkable situation.
Should they push ahead into one of the most anticipated seasons in decades with rookie punter Matt Araiza on the roster, despite the accusations of rape against him? Or should they drop him?
It was a quick call.
Less than 24 hours after Bills coach Sean McDermott took the podium following the team's final preseason game Friday night and addressed the situation, Araiza was gone.
His release resolved what was becoming a gigantic crisis for the team, as McDermott acknowledged in his post-game remarks.
"There was a game just played, but I want to talk about something that’s more important, which is what we have going on with one of the members of our team right now, Matt Araiza," McDermott told reporters Friday. "It is a situation that is extremely serious, just hard to go through and it’s not a situation that I or we take lightly whatsoever."
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Many fans, some of them season ticket holders, certainly let the team know how seriously they were taking it. They expressed disgust Friday as news of the accusations unfolded and they were watching and waiting for the Bills to make a decision about Araiza. So were others throughout the NFL.
“That’s the tough thing about working in professional sports and live entertainment, there are people and personalities involved and it can get crazy, so you always have to be on your toes and ready," said John Cimperman, a longtime sports marketing executive.
Araiza won a competition to be the team’s punter over veteran Matt Haack this week, but he did not play Friday night in the Bills final preseason game against the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte, N.C.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in San Diego County Superior Court and first reported by the Los Angeles Times, accuses Araiza, then 21, of having sex with a high school senior outside of a home where he had been living, and then bringing her inside to a room where she said she was repeatedly raped in the early hours of Oct. 17. Two other former college teammates at San Diego State University are also accused in the lawsuit of gang raping the 17-year-old girl.
Until they made the announcement Saturday, the Bills, who are preseason favorites to win the Super Bowl, had faced walking a fine line between answering calls to cut the 2022 sixth-round draft pick and waiting for the legal process to play out.
“Everybody is entitled to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law as part of the legal process," said Nellie Drew, a professor of sports law at the University at Buffalo "But this is not a court of law. This is a very public, high-profile entity, which has a private employment relationship with an individual.”
If the team didn’t cut Araiza, the public relations fallout would have come swiftly, Drew said.
Why Bills punter Matt Araiza not subject to potential discipline under NFL's personal conduct policy
Araiza cannot be disciplined by the NFL because the reported incident predates his time in the NFL.
“You can never ignore the PR part of it. It should always be a consideration,” Drew said. “In the climate that we live in today, I would be concerned that sponsors may step forward next and put pressure on the Bills.”
The PR pressure already was being felt. One woman who’s an attorney in Buffalo wrote on Twitter that she had already contacted her season ticket representative, expressing her disgust with the organization and encouraging others who feel the same to call or email the Bills.
“Cut him immediately @BuffaloBills ban him @NFL,” @Bills_Chick wrote on Twitter.
Cut him immediately @BuffaloBills ban him @NFL https://t.co/hBSIacxPMy
— Bills_Chick (@Bills_Chick) August 25, 2022
“This is sick, I’d rather go for it for every fourth down for the whole year than have this guy punt for us,” another woman wrote.
Asked about the Bills' female fans Friday night, McDermott repeated that the team is not taking the situation "lightly."
"I’m hurt, I understand they’re hurt," McDermott said. "It’s emotional. It’s not easy to hear about some of the things that I’ve heard about over the last, several hours, say. Haven’t slept a lot, to be honest with you, because this is a game, but there’s other things that are more important than this."
Fans coming to Araiza’s defense were in short supply. Most of these commenters on social media were giving Araiza the benefit of the doubt, saying a person is innocent until proven guilty and asking that the legal process play out.
But others took the Bills leadership to task for their limited explanation about the circumstances surrounding Araiza.
Some social media commenters called the Bills and some of their fans hypocritical for being critics of the Cleveland Browns trading for and signing Deshaun Watson to the league’s most lucrative contract as he went through more than 20 civil complaints accusing him of sexual assault. Watson, who did not play for the Houston Texans last season before being traded, has been suspended for the first 11 games of the 2022 season, all while denying the accusations.
Cimperman predicted Friday that the Bills, if they kept Araiza, would have to take steps to minimize the damage with corporate sponsors, season ticket holders and other key audiences. And that wouldn't have precluded people from protesting outside the stadium once the season started or booing Araiza and the team when he stepped onto the field.
The lawsuit claims that the teen went in and out of consciousness, but remembers moments as the men assaulted her.
According to the complaint, the teenager had already been drinking with friends when she arrived at the home and was "observably intoxicated." She said Araiza handed her a drink at the party that she believed “not only contained alcohol, but other intoxicating substances,” according to the suit. She also said she told Araiza that she was in high school.
The complaint said that she went to the police the next day and waited for about five hours before an officer spoke to her. She was then taken to a hospital for a rape exam.
Araiza’s San Diego-based attorney, Kerry Armstrong, has called the accusations false, saying that an investigator spoke to witnesses from the party who contradict the accusations against Araiza.
Dan Gilleon, the attorney who filed the lawsuit, released a statement saying: "This was a horrific crime, the kind of which happens all too often. What makes these crimes different is not only that they were committed by self-entitled athletes. Just as awful as the crimes, for months, multiple organizations have acted the part of enablers looking the other way in denial that my client deserves justice even if the defendants are prized athletes."
