Dallas Cowboys nose tackle Josh Brent will no longer be allowed on the Dallas Cowboys’ sideline, team and league sources told ESPN.com Tuesday.
Brent, who is on the reserve/non-football injury list after being charged with intoxication manslaughter in the crash that killed teammate Jerry Brown two weeks, was on the sideline for Sunday’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers, unbeknownst to the Cowboys and officials in the NFL’s offices.
The team and the league agree that it wasn’t appropriate, sources told ESPN.com.
Brent attended the game after he was urged by several teammates. Coach Jason Garrett didn’t know about it until pregame warm-ups, and owner Jerry Jones didn’t know until he saw Brent on television. Garrett told reporters Monday that Cowboys players were honoring the wishes of Brown’s mother, Stacey Jackson.
Sources said that Brent was taken there by a teammate who told him that his teammates wanted him there. He left the stadium in the third quarter, once he became aware that his presence was creating a controversy.
“It becomes a real sensitive topic to a lot of people when you’re in a public place like the game,” Garrett told reporters Monday. “There were no bad intentions other than to support Josh as part of our football team. This is a game and you need to be here. That’s what our players wanted to convey to him and they really encouraged him to come to the game. I thought Josh handled it beautifully the way that he came and then when he felt like there were some issues he felt the right thing to do was to leave. But we’re going to support him in every way that we can. We also will be sensitive to this kind of issue.”