Today Show Interviews Janay Rice at Reisterstown Home

Janay Rice began to cry as Today show host Matt Lauer read something she posted on Instagram in September after footage of her husband Ray Rice assaulting her went public.

She told Lauer it “brings back anger” that she felt at the time of the video’s release.

“I was hurt,” Janay Rice said during an interview that aired Monday morning on the NBC morning show. “To see the man that I love have everything ripped up from under him made me angry.

Related: Janay Rice, Wife of Ray Rice, Responds to ‘Horrible Nightmare’

Ray Rice, a running back with the Baltimore Ravens since 2008, was charged with assault in New Jersey, where he hit Janay in a casino elevator in February. He is completing a pretrial intervention program for the third-degree assault charge.

The NFL suspended him for two games and after TMZ released a video that showed Ray Rice hitting Janay Rice inside the elevator, the Ravens terminated his contract and the NFL suspended him indefinitely, a ruling that was overturned Friday.

Related: Ray Rice Wins Appeal of Indefinite Suspension

Janay Rice told Today that she was angry because the couple did not have “the support system that I thought we had from the Ravens.”

Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti said the organization resorted to “tough love” at times.

“We view ourselves as a family. Like families, we have used tough love in the past (fines, benching and releases) with repeat offenders,” Bisciotti said in a statement in September. “Because of his positive contributions on and off the field over the last six years, Ray had earned every benefit of the doubt from our organization. We took everything we knew and decided to support Ray Rice until we could not.”

The running back was known for his community service, specifically involving children. Individuals and organizations sent approximately 30 letters to the District Attorney’s Office in New Jersey detailing his acts of kindness, from helping to fund a child’s funeral to making kids who are ”typically cast aside ... feel welcome and special,” according to CBS Sports. He appeared regularly in schools and on local football fields in the community.

“The fact that I knew we wouldn’t be here anymore made me angry,” Janay Rice said, her voice cracking on the Today, as she glanced around her Reisterstown home.

The Baltimore area is the second place she has lived, and adjusting to a new home was hard, she wrote in an essay published by ESPN last week.

The couple moved from their hometown of New Rochelle, NY, to Baltimore in 2007; and working and attending Towson University while Ray Rice was out training with the Ravens was “the most difficult” year in their relationship until this one, she said in the ESPN piece.

Now, “we have to pick up and move our child from what she’s used to. It hurt. It hurt a lot,” Janay Rice said during the Today show interview.

She and Ray Rice live in Reisterstown with their daughter Rayven, who was born in 2012.

The Ravens said in 2013 that “nobody can question Rice’s loyalty to the Ravens. He named his baby daughter Rayven.”

Ray Rice was a three-time Pro Bowler as a Ravens running back who played six seasons before his release in September. On Friday, Ray Rice was reinstated and is now eligible to play in the NFL after former U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones determined that the indefinite suspension was an “abuse of discretion,” ESPN reported.

• Read the full ESPN essay written by Janay Rice here.
• Watch the Today show interview with Janay Rice and Candy Palmer here.

Screenshot from Today show.