AP Photo/Gail Burton

On Thursday in Owings Mills, Maryland Ravens running back Ray Rice took to the podium for a second time to apologize for the incident that started with him assaulting his then-fiancee and ended in him pulling her unconscious out of an elevator in Atlantic City.

“No football games or no money was going to determine what I have to live with for the rest of my life. … It hurts me that I can’t go out there and play football, but it hurts more that I’ve got to be a father and explain what happened to my [2-year-old] daughter,” he said. “I think the punishment was the punishment, and I never planned on appealing. Whether it’s two games, four games, six games, eight games, I’m trying to own my actions and be a man about it and take whatever is given to me.”

He also publicly apologized to his wife and seemed to speak directly to all of those who questioned her role in the incident with one sentence: “My wife can do no wrong.”

It won’t change what he did — and what he did was wrong. But it is the first time that someone in the National Football League seemed to finally be able to not muddle what shouldn’t be a difficult message.

As we go into the start of the NFL preseason, female fans of the NFL and especially the Baltimore Ravens should be left wondering how seriously the league takes violence against women. Roger Goodell sent out a flack to defend his two-game suspension on ESPN (though the commissioner will speak publicly for the first time today and is likely to have to answer the question on his own). Meanwhile, the league tastelessly continued to sell a pink v-neck Rice jersey which was aimed at its female fans.

One of the league’s broadcast partners, ESPN, laid down a light suspension of its own by taking Stephen A. Smith off the air for a week (during the summer when not a lot is happening anyway) after he repeatedly seemed to imply that we should question Janay Palmer’s role in becoming unconscious in the elevator.

And the Baltimore Ravens themselves, it seems, were more focused on supporting their embattled running back than anything else. The team’s official website’s featured a story about Rice receiving a standing ovation upon his return to the field. The team’s official blog featured an entry from its public relations director, featuring quotes from the team’s owner that spoke only of what a good man Ray Rice was and how much they wanted to support him. Considering how badly they botched Rice’s first press conference, when the team’s official account awkwardly live-tweeted his statements and Palmer sat by Rice’s side, it wasn’t surprising.

Rice, who has reportedly gone to counseling and at least publicly seems distraught over what he did in that casino in Atlantic City, may very well be mostly a good man. Or at least trying to be. He said he hopes to help others one day — something that in Maryland, where there were over 17,000 cases of domestic violence reported in 2011 and the Ravens are beloved could go a long way. He seems to understand that what he did was seriously wrong.

But when looking at all of the people around him, you have to wonder if he’s the only one.