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After a few quiet weeks there is finally some movement in the alleged assault case involving Titans wide receiver, Tajae Sharpe, and offensive lineman, Sebastian Tretola. In case you missed the original reporting on this story, you can read about it in depth here from the Tennessean.
Now, WKRN in Nashville is reporting that Sharpe and Tretola are filing a countersuit against Dante Satterfield, the man who accused them of assault.
JUST IN: 2 Titans players file counter lawsuit after man accuses them of assault https://t.co/XUpeTYoPSO
— WKRN (@WKRN) July 7, 2017
(Shout out to TitansAllDay101 for passing this link along)
The countersuit claims that the players did “rough up” Satterfield, but that they acted in self-defense as Satterfield had followed them out of the bar while threatening them and saying he was in a gang.
So now we have heard both sides of the story, but we still haven’t gotten word on whether criminal charges will be filed in this case as Metro Police are still finishing their investigation. Chances are the truth is somewhere in the middle of the two sides’ stories as it usually is. What we do know from where both accounts line up is that Sharpe beat this guy pretty badly. The question for the courts to decide is whether or not it was self-defense. Realistically, the civil side of this case will be settled out of court quietly, likely costing Sharpe and Tretola a chunk of their rookie contract money, and gag orders for all parties involved so this never gets talked about again.
The question then becomes whether Metro brings criminal charges and that is the likely tipping point for whether this becomes a suspendable offense in the NFL’s eyes. The NFL isn’t going to suspend players for settling civil suits, but it has shown repeatedly in the past that it will dole out suspensions for criminal charges regardless of whether the player gets convicted. IF charges are filed and an NFL investigation follows, I would expect somewhere between a 2-4 game suspension for Sharpe and maybe a 1 game suspension for Tretola considering the parts each of them were described to have taken in the incident, but its hard to predict what Roger Goodell will do when it comes to suspensions.
This story can’t go away soon enough.