It has been a rough week for the NFL.

Former NFL safety Darren Sharper has been charged with raping and drugging women in California. He is also under investigation in connection with five more rapes and drugging women in eleven other states including Las Vegas, Tempe, Ariz., and New Orleans.

LA prosecutors have filed a motion to raise his bail to $10 million.
According to an investigator Sharper would meet women at clubs, lure them to a hotel or apartment, and then drug and rape them.

Sharper’s arrest comes on the heels of a report released today by lawyer Ted Wells, who was conducting an investigation at the behest of the NFL, into allegations that Miami Dolphins offensive lineman Richie Incognito had bullied teammate Jonathan Martin.

Not only did the report conclude that Incognito had harassed and bullied Martin, Wells found that offensive lineman John Jerry and Mike Pouncey had also engaged in a pattern of harassment directed at Martin. All three men were accused of bullying and harassing another unnamed Dolphins offensive lineman and a member of the training staff as well. The harassment detailed in the report included racial and homophobic insults along with taunts about Martin and his family members.

During the 2013 off-season, thirty-one players from nineteen different teams were arrested for a variety of offenses, including murder and attempted murder, child abuse, soliciting prostitutes, and DUI and public intoxication, according to a database of player arrests compiled by U-T San Diego.

Does the NFL have a problem? Last year, Peter King of SI.com compared the number of NFL player arrests in 2010 with FBI crime data for the overall population. King found that the percentage of players arrested in the NFL for that year was 1.9 percent, compared with the 4.9 percent of American adults arrested in 2010.

Still, all this negative press is not good for the game. So what can be done? Fox sports analyst and former Baltimore Raven’s head coach Brian Billick thinks the NFL should have a zero tolerance policy, something they already have when it comes to gambling.

Whether zero tolerance would lower the crime rate for NFL players is an open question. But it is worth looking into.