Roger Goodell's wife has been using an anonymous Twitter account to defend him this season against unseemly or critical online stories about the NFL commissioner.
Jane Skinner Goodell, in response to The Wall Street Journal's discovery of her use of the account, called it a passionate act done out of love.
"It was a REALLY silly thing to do and done out of frustration -- and love," Jane Skinner Goodell said Thursday afternoon in a written statement to the Journal. "As a former media member, I'm always bothered when the coverage doesn't provide a complete and accurate picture of a story. I'm also a wife and a mom. I have always passionately defended the hard-working guy I love -- and I always will. I just may not use Twitter to do so in the future!"
The Journal, in its investigation of the Twitter account @forargument, found that Goodell had used it 14 times to defend her husband in reply to the posting of online stories from various publications, including ESPN.com, NBC Sports and the Journal. The account has since been deleted from Twitter after the Journal's publication of the story.
Late last month, when the NBC Sports blog Pro Football Talk tweeted it was "on the commissioner" to mollify the recent national anthem controversy, Goodell used the account to reply.
"Please do better reporting," Jane Skinner Goodell, a former anchor for Fox News before her retirement in 2011, tweeted. "He is already doing this. You are behind."
Roger Goodell wrote Tuesday in a letter to all 32 teams that NFL has developed a plan to "move past" its ongoing debate about player protests during the national anthem and could enact it next week. Goodell made it clear in the letter, obtained by ESPN's Adam Schefter, that he wants players to stand during the anthem. He did not provide specifics on how he intends to ensure it, but he wrote that it would "include such elements as an in-season platform to promote the work of our players on these core issues."
The issue will be discussed, and likely acted upon, during the NFL's regularly scheduled fall meetings on Oct. 17-18.