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NEW YORK (NBC) — A second chance for Ray Rice: Once suspended indefinitely by the NFL for knocking out his then-fiancée (and now-wife) in a hotel elevator. The former running back is now clear to sign with any team after an arbitrator overturned the NFL's suspension on Friday.
Rice's victory comes as his wife, Janay Rice, spoke out for the first time in an exclusive interview with NBC's Matt Lauer. Their conversation was taped before Friday's decision.
"(I) can't imagine that you were … calm when you started to realize exactly what happened in that elevator," Lauer said in the interview. "Can you describe those emotions?"
"I was furious," Janay Rice said. "We came home and we didn't talk the entire ride. He tried to talk to me, I didn't want to hear any of it. I just knew he hit me and I was done."
"Of course," she continued, "in the back of my mind and in my heart I knew that our relationship wouldn't be over because I know that this isn't us, and it's not him."
The big question now centers on Ray Rice's professional life: Will another team make him an offer to suit up?
"The coaches are very obsessed with minimizing distraction. With Ray Rice, it's going to be an unknown," said Mike Florio, of NBCSports.com's "Pro Football Talk."
Rice won his appeal after arguing the NFL was punishing him twice for the same offense. The NFL first suspended Rice for two games in June upon learning about the incident in the elevator, and then suspended him indefinitely in September after TMZ Sports released graphic surveillance video showing him assaulting Janay Rice.
NFL officials argued they hadn't seen the tape and that it wasn't consistent with what Rice had initially told them about what happened.
But in her decision, the judge said Rice had the videotape as part of the discovery process in his criminal prosecution and "the NFL never asked him for it."
In a statement, Rice thanked his wife and the judge and admitted that he made a mistake.
A spokesperson for the NFL said the league respects the decision to reinstate Rice and league administrators now consider him a free agent.
