No punishments handed down by the NFL make sense.

Ray Rice’s career abruptly stalled when TMZSports released a video Monday showing he beat his fiancée — now wife — Janay Palmer inside an elevator and then dragged the unconscious Palmer out of the elevator in February. A Feb. 19 video by TMZ only showed Rice dragging Palmer’s body out of the elevator.

The world and Rice’s employers — the Baltimore Ravens — apparently needed the extended video to become public to realize Rice did in fact get off very lightly with a two-game suspension in July for the violent altercation.

But, Rice is still getting off lightly.

Well, Ray, you’re fired and now suspended indefinitely, but have fun not going to jail for the charge of felony aggravated assault like anyone else would have.

If you’re one of Rice’s few — and I stress few — supporters, don’t worry: In a year or so he’ll be back on the football field breaking tackles and leading your fantasy football to glorious and short-lived victory.

That’ll come after a very public and emotional reconciliation tour. There’ll be tears and some minor uproar and we’ll all forget about this incident. It’ll become a redemption story like those of Michael Vick or Ray Lewis.

Let’s not forget the real villains of this story: NFL commissioner Roger Goodell opted to suspend Rice for a mere two games in July despite the obvious implications of the video and Rice’s admission that, yes, he did knock his fiancée unconscious.

It took the Ravens until allegedly seeing the video of the punch for the “first” time to punish Rice. What did they think happened in that elevator? Don’t applaud the Ravens; they just reacted to a bad PR moment.

Rice was going to be a distraction and the Ravens did what all NFL teams do to a distraction: They got rid of it.

Beyond that, the NFL may not be completely honest when it says no one had seen the video of the punch prior to Monday. Just about every reporter said the NFL had access to the video when the investigation first began. Either all those reporters are mistaken or were told a lie.

This is probably the last time anyone can — or should — trust anything that comes from the NFL offices or a team’s front office. They have one goal in mind: limiting the public reaction. When they can’t do that, they’ll throw whoever they can under the wheels.

Goodell can issue all the mea culpas he can — increasing the minimum suspension for domestic abuse to six games — but it still doesn’t change the fact that he’s supposed to be the dean of discipline.

You smoke weed a few times? Suspended for a year! You commit a violent crime? Let’s sit and talk about it.

Goodell’s got another chance to, uh, redeem himself when he has to deal with 49ers’ defensive lineman Ray McDonald, who himself is now alleged to have attacked his fiancée. I can’t wait for that suspension and the inevitable backlash from the all-too-likely too short suspension.

Rice is bad PR for now. He’ll be back, but the topsy-turvy world that is the NFL and team’s front offices will continue forevermore.

Rice got his deserving punishment — far too late for it to matter — and the NFL sends another distraction riding off into the the sunset.