I wasn't trying to cheat the game. That's the thing I want to make clear. At the time, I had been away from the team for about a month. I was still just so depressed and angry, and the days were so long. I was just looking for anything to take my mind off of things and make the day go faster.

Ridley said he lost his joy for football and what started his journey to that point was playing through a foot injury for the entire season, when he caught 90 passes for 1, yards.

Ridley said he was told he had a bone bruise and took pain-killing injections to play and then found out he had a broken bone in his foot when he saw a specialist two months before the season began.

Ridley said he got surgery and rushed to training camp but felt mentally drained. He still needed painkillers to play and was unable to spend quality time with his daughter because he couldn't do anything but lie down in a dark room. That's when his anxiety cranked up, Ridley wrote, and it got worse when he returned home following the Falcons' season opener to learn burglars had broken into his house.

Security footage showed five or six armed men in the house and that scared him and traumatized his wife, he wrote. It felt like I was getting attacked -- but almost by something invisible.

Ridley said he tried to continue to play hurt but wanted to be home with his wife and daughter. He didn't want to make the trip to London for the Falcons' game against the New York Jets on Oct.

That's when he started talking to a therapist. Ridley said being called in front of NFL investigators to be questioned about the bets in November was "probably the worst day of his life. Whenever people ask, 'What were you thinking? No one -- not the leagues, bettors or bookmakers -- want participants betting on an event on which they may have inside information or could impact directly.

The NFL said it found no evidence that any games were compromised or that Ridley used inside information to make his wagers that were placed online in November At that time, Ridley was away from the Falcons on the non-football injury list and had announced that he was stepping away from football to work on his mental health.

Ridley is the second NFL player to be suspended for betting on league games since a ruling by the U. Supreme Court opened a path for states to authorize sports betting. Since the ruling, 30 states and the District of Columbia have launched legal betting markets.

The legal market is what identified betting by Ridley and then- Arizona Cardinals defensive back Josh Shaw , who was suspended in after an NFL investigation found he had wagered on league games. Shaw was reinstated in , but has not been picked up by a team.

Ridley violated the league's gambling policy by placing three multi-leg parlay bets that included at least one NFL game in November His parlays included the Falcons "to win," according to sources. The Falcons were small road favorites over the Jacksonville Jaguars on Nov.

Atlanta covered the spread in a win. It has not been revealed to ESPN if Ridley bet on the Falcons on the money line to win straight up or with the point spread. The NFL gambling policy allows players to bet on other sports besides football with legal operators.

On Friday, gaming industry site SportsHandle. According to multiple sources familiar with the event, Ridley placed the bets on his cellphone but used a betting account not registered in his name with Hard Rock's Florida sportsbook.

Ridley was outside of Florida when he placed the bets, triggering a geolocation violation and leading the sportsbook to investigate further, according to the sources.

Online sportsbooks use geolocation services to track where bets are being placed. The geolocation service collects data, such as IP addresses, from the device being used to place the wager. After receiving the geolocation notice, the Hard Rock sportsbook notified Genius Sports, an NFL partner that monitors the betting market for the league, prompting the investigation that ultimately led to Ridley's suspension.

Genius Sports is a London-based company that distributes data from leagues, including the NFL, to sportsbooks around the world, while also looking for unusual betting patterns. Sportsbooks face a significant challenge in preventing a player, coach or referee from placing bets on their leagues.

The professional sports leagues successfully lobbied many states to include regulations prohibiting players, coaches, trainers and other personnel from betting on their sports. New York's sports betting rules, for example, prohibit wagering by "any person whose participation may undermine the integrity of wagering on a sports event or the conduct of such sports event itself.

Jeff Ifrah, a prominent gaming attorney in Washington, D. It's difficult to do that if the league isn't providing that list.

Conscious Gaming, a Nevada-based company, believes it has technology that can assist in identifying prohibited bettors. The company's "PlayPause" platform, which creates a multi-state self-exclusion and impermissible bettor list, is in the early stages of launching with state regulators and operators, according to Anna Sainsbury, trustee of Conscious Gaming and CEO of GeoComply, a company that provides geolocation services to most U.

sportsbook operators. Adding impermissible bettors, like athletes and coaches, to a shared database would allow sportsbooks to cross-reference with their customer list, similar to what they do with problem gamblers who have self-excluded. market, we see the opportunity to leverage more innovative and reliable methods to mitigate problem gambling and ensure impermissible bettors are indeed restricted from wagering based on league policies and regulatory requirements," Sainsbury told ESPN in a statement.

Only with player safeguards, fraud detection and effective age and identity verification are we able to create a regulated market we're proud of.

This means whether a player has self-excluded or if they are prohibited from betting due to regulatory restrictions, operators have confidence that they are compliant. Sportsbooks also use "know your customer" or KYC protocols, which vary by state and often are defined broadly with terms like best practices or measures and risk assessment.

KYC is designed to combat money laundering, but it also is a tool for identifying prohibited bettors. Typically, the amount wagered triggers enhanced procedures, including random auditing of deposits, asking for personal identification data and running background and credit checks through services like LexisNexis and Experian.

In New York, licensees are instructed to identify customers and types of play that "potentially possess the greatest risk of money laundering. Players and all league personnel -- owners, coaches, trainers, officials, league office employees, security personnel, consultants, club employees and game-day personnel -- are prohibited from betting, whether directly or indirectly through a third-party, on NFL games and events, like the draft, for example.

The NFL provides gambling education to players and personnel. Signage warning of the consequences of betting can be found in team facilities, and the league distributes educational videos, some featuring Shaw, that teams are required to watch.

In addition, the NFL has partnerships within the sports betting industry with established lines of communication between sportsbook operators and the league.

Ultimately, though, there is no definitive way to stop players or prohibited personnel from placing bets on the league. If a player or personnel chooses to violate league policy and bet on the NFL, it is difficult to stop them.

While away from the Atlanta Falcons during the season, Ridley placed bets on NFL games (not involving the Falcons) and was accordingly Under the new version of the gambling policy, he would have been suspended for two years. That's the most dramatic increase in punishment under Ridley wagered a total of $ across six separate bets involving the Falcons. He also bet a /1 parlay that could have paid $

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