By NOAH WOYAK

The Mirror reporter

Some of the more controversial decisions in the NFL are over the suspensions and punishment of players. These punishments are used to help keep players in line, and prevent them from performing unsportsmanlike acts on the field or violating their Code of Conduct off the field.

While it is good that the NFL punishes its players for things they do both on and off the field, there should be some matter of consistency between how much time each player should miss depending on what they did.

One of the more controversial decisions was that regarding New York Giants kicker Josh Brown. Brown had been accused of both physically and mentally abusing his wife. However, despite the NFL Code of Conduct strictly prohibiting anything like that to be done off the field, Brown was only given a one week suspension. This is absolutely absurd when compared to the standard for substance abuse suspensions which is typically around five weeks.

It is ridiculous that NFL players using an illegal substance, while it should result in the player missing a few games, causes the players to miss significantly more than a player causing physical harm to someone off the field.

The NFL has recently begun to go in, what I believe, is the right direction with this, as evident with Ezekiel Elliott’s recent six-week suspension over a domestic violence charge.

The NFL should have a consistent way of suspending players. For example, a player will always be suspended 6 games for a domestic violence charge, or four games for an illegal substance charge. While I don’t want those specific numbers, I do want a consistent number for each violation. Recently, the NFL has jumped between one and 10 weeks for players using illegal substances. These may be different cases, but I think for the same type of violation they should have the same penalty.

The NFL may be heading in the right direction as far as domestic abuse suspensions go, but they are definitely beginning to go in the wrong direction with just about everything else. In order to fix this, they must set guidelines about how much each player misses for certain violations. If they can do that there will be a lot more justice and fairness in the NFL for players.