Cleveland Browns Sign Kareem Hunt Despite Controversy

CLEVELAND — The Cleveland Browns have signed controversial running back Kareem Hunt, the team announced Monday.

"We fully understand and respect the complexity of questions and issues in signing a player with Kareem’s history and do not condone his actions. Given what we know about Kareem through our extensive research, we believe he deserves a second chance but certainly with the understanding that he has to go through critical and essential steps to become a performing member of this organization, aside from what the NFL determines from their ongoing investigation," Browns General Manager John Dorsey said in a statement.

Hunt was a star for the Kansas City Chiefs until video surfaced of him attacking a woman at The 9 Hotel in downtown Cleveland. Video footage from that night, recorded from a hallway ceiling in the hotel, shows Hunt lunging for, pushing and kicking a 19-year-old woman. The woman told police she suffered scrapes on her hands and knees in the altercation.

The Chiefs cut Hunt, who spent the rest of this season as a free agent.

After the video emerged and the Chiefs cut him, Hunt did an interview with ESPN. He apologized for mischaracterizing the hotel fight, and then apologized to his friends, family, teammates — and the woman in the video.

Controversy swallowed Hunt and the NFL for weeks, with many pundits again wondering if the NFL had an endemic problem condoning violence toward women. The maelstrom slowed when the post-season approached and the Hunt incident was shuffled to the back of the media's collective mind.

Now, Hunt is a Cleveland Brown.

"First off, I would like to once again apologize for my actions last year. What I did was wrong and inexcusable. That is not the man I was raised to be, and I’ve learned a great deal from that experience and certainly should have been more truthful about it after the fact," Hunt said in a statement released through the Browns.

Hunt is a native Northeast Ohioan who played his high school ball at Willoughby South and went to college at the University of Toledo. He was drafted by the Kansas City Chiefs, where he became an All-Pro running back before the video of his actions surfaced.

Hunt's Monday statement continued: "I’m extremely grateful that John Dorsey, Dee and Jimmy Haslam and the Cleveland Browns organization are granting me the opportunity to earn their trust and represent their organization in the best way possible on and off the field. I am committed to following the necessary steps to learn and to be a better and healthier person from this situation. I also understand the expectations that the Browns have clearly laid out and that I have to earn my way back to the NFL. I’m a work in progress as a person, but I’m committed to taking advantage of the support systems that I have in place to become the best and healthier version of myself.”"

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Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images