Teams that consider drafting former Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon will want to get answers to many questions, including for example whether there’s a chance he may viciously punch a stranger while out and about in his first NFL city. Another question is whether Mixon has true remorse for the assault on Amelia Molitor, or whether he’s saying what he thinks he needs to say now in order to minimize an ugly incident and move on.
As it relates to the existence of remorse, the most obvious question is when did Mixon first apologize to Molitor or her family? Here’s what Mixon said during a Monday visit to PFT Live.
“It was actually about two years later,” Mixon said. “I’ve always wanted to apologize but from my legal team and a couple of people from the legal situation. . . . you know, in the Oklahoma program to media it wasn’t a right time for me, the right time for me to actually apologize. I pretty much told my legal team that if I could do anything for me to at least see her face-to-face you know where nobody is around I could at least apologize and ask her for my forgiveness but they didn’t allow me to do that. The first opportunity I got, you know, I’ve taken the initiative to ask for forgiveness and apologize to her and if I could’ve did it before I would’ve done that.”
If he truly was prevented from apologizing due to advice given by his “legal team” or anyone else, it wasn’t the best advice he could have gotten. In cases where responsibility is in dispute (e.g., a car accident), an apology can be characterized as an admission. In cases where it’s clear that the person did what he’s accused of doing, there’s no reason to stop him from apologizing, if he wants to.
Chances are that teams who meet with Mixon away from the Scouting Combine (by rule, he’s banned from attending) will ask some follow-up questions on this point -- if the goal is to determine whether Mixon is truly sorry for what he did, or whether more than two years after the fact he’s saying what he needs to say in order to put the incident behind him. There’s no way of knowing the answer with certainty, but the teams that meet with him will be able to pose questions without cameras and microphones present, and Mixon will be able to answer without everything he says being recorded for future use.