It was reported last week that Gareon Conley now plans to sue the woman who accused him of rape in 2017.
Conley will say that his accuser hurt his draft position and caused him to lose valuable endorsement deals – including a deal with Nike.
It’s hard to know exactly how much Conley lost because of the accusations, but it does appear that his draft stock took a significant hit because of the pending investigation going on at the time. In fact, the Raiders, who drafted Conley with the 24th-overall pick, faced backlash for taking Conley where they did.
From the day he was drafted, the Raiders were strongly supportive of Conley and were confident that their first-round pick would be exonerated.
One of the resources utilized by general manager Reggie McKenzie and representatives from other teams was a report by Damond Talbot of NFLDraftDiamonds.com. Talbot’s report was published just two days before the draft in 2017 and it described in significant detail what witnesses told him about the incident between Conley and his accuser.
(Talbot’s report can be found here though his server is currently down. The story is particularly specific in nature)
Talbot talked on Monday about where he thought Conley might have been drafted were it not for legal problems leading up to the draft.
“Conley would likely have been a top 10 pick if he was not accused of rape,” Talbot said via his Twitter account. “I still believe that very much. I was crushed by some teams security staff for my report, but in the end it was right. Did not get much love or even thanks from some, but I did not do it for notoriety.”
I still have the email from the Bengals head of security asking me to call him about Gareon Conley after my investigative report was broke. Bengals drafted 9th in 2017 and selected John Ross. They had Conley very high on their big board according to my conversations with them.
— NFL Draft Diamonds (@DraftDiamonds) July 9, 2018
The Raiders, it seems, were among the teams willing to listen. They were also the team that benefitted the most by listening.
“I was told thank you from two people, Reggie McKenzie and another scout who really pounded the table for Conley in the Raiders organization,” Talbot wrote on Twitter. “The Raiders security team was awesome. The guys I talked to were very intelligent and worthy of the position to say the least.”
What was interesting is that NFL teams (a few of them at least) were apparently upset about Talbot’s report prior to the draft (that Conley may have been the victim).
Which begs the question… why would any team have crushed a report that Conley may have been innocent?
Maybe those teams were hoping to get him a little later in the draft?
twitter: @raidersbeat
I’m sure it’s the same teams that had something to say about the Raiders drafting Hurst. The NFL people are so fickle and most are straight cowards. All Hurst would have done was probably end up with the patriots and it would have been a good gamble by bellichick at least that was what they would have said same for Conley.