Clayton: There is precedent in how Seahawks should handle Derrick Coleman situation

There’s a lot of question marks behind the decision making and proper reaction to Wednesday’s arrest of Seahawks fullback Derrick Coleman.

But as murky as the situation is for the 25 year old, ESPN’s NFL guru John Clayton said, in all likelihood, Coleman won’t return to the field until prosecutors decide whether or not to file charges.

“We saw that slow process with Adrian Peterson, we saw it with Greg Hardy and I’m sure we’re probably going to see the same thing with Derrick Coleman,” Clayton said Friday on 710 ESPN Seattle’s “Bob, Groz and Tom.”

Coleman was arrested on suspicion of felony vehicular assault and hit and run following a two-vehicle accident in Bellevue. The Seahawks suspended Coleman indefinitely pending more information about the incident. The King County Prosecutor’s Office will make a decision on whether to charge Coleman once the Bellevue Police Department completes its investigation, which is expected to take at least a month. That investigation will reveal whether Coleman was under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the accident, which BPD suspected may have been the case.

Clayton said Coleman has a lot to lose.

“Not financially, he’s not going to lose money, but he loses time out there and the Seahawks lose his services,” Clayton said.

Clayton said it’s becoming common practice for NFL teams to delay making any major roster moves related to criminal investigations until the courts return with a decision. He said the Seahawks could have forced the league to be “the bad guy,” but that Seattle made the preemptive move since the organization will ultimately have a better overall understanding of the situation than the executives in New York will.

“It buys time,” he said. “Because, like in any case, you wanna see what happened; did he do something wrong. Where was the injury? All those different things. And so, I guess this, unfortunately for Derrick and unfortunately for the victim, is the way this has to be done. In the mean time they won’t have his services. They are going to have to go with different players, but I think they can cover for him. But it’s a shame, because, first off, somebody got hurt.”