If I punched one of my coworkers and broke his jaw, not only would I get fired, I would most likely face criminal assault and battery charges. I guess we give a lot of leeway to professional athletes on workplace violence because professional athletics are inherently physical and sometimes even violent, and it can be difficult to distinguish where the game ends and "real life" begins, but breaking someone's jaw in a locker room fight should have at least some sort of consequence besides switching teams so that players are on notice that it isn't an appropriate behavior. I admit, though, I don't know what the appropriate policy should be for the NFL to handle workplace violence. Is there an existing player policy that specifies penalties for this sort of incident? As we saw with Peterson/Rice/Brady, specific player policies pre-dating the incident are the key question to what discipline is acceptable.
