[x_video_player type=”16:9″ no_container=”true” m4v=”http://blackandbluereview.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/GH-copy.mov” poster=”52238″]25 minutes after Greg Hardy walked past reporters hoping for a comment Monday afternoon, Panthers head coach Ron Rivera faced a line of questioning about his embattled defensive end.Rivera, who made a surprising Sunday morning decision to pull Hardy from the home opener against the Lions, did not share a firm update for the week ahead. Hardy may play against the Steelers in Week 3. He may not. As we saw last week, many things can change in just a matter of days.”All that happened is he was deactivated. We didn’t suspend him. We’re not doing anything of that nature,” Rivera said. “He’ll practice this week. He’ll be in all the meetings like he’s supposed to, he’ll get all the treatments he’s supposed to, and then we’ll just go from there.”Rivera repeated what he said after the Panthers beat the Lions — the NFL’s climate has changed, a momentum shift that began last Monday when TMZ released a videotape of former Ravens running back Ray Rice punching his fiancee.It’s unclear if the Vikings’ quick action to deactivate running back Adrian Peterson on Friday night after he was indicted on child abuse charges factored into the Panthers’ decision, but the cloud of controversy currently surrounding Bank of America Stadium is impossible to ignore.”It becomes a distraction. That’s part of the reason why I made the decision. If you play him and you win, then it’s you don’t have a conscience. If you play him and you lose, then he’s a distraction,” Rivera admitted.After Hardy was told he would not be playing on Sunday, Rivera claimed Hardy said, “I understand.” Then he took the coach up on his offer to leave for the rest of the day instead of staying to watch his teammates beat the Lions.The Panthers are 2-0 for the first time since 2008, but that appears to be a secondary story right now. Instead, another week of drama and a pending decision on Hardy’s status await.”I don’t know. What is right?” Rivera answered when asked if the Panthers initially made the right call to wait for Hardy’s legal process to play out before they took action. “We do the best we can. Nobody’s infallible. We all make mistakes. We all correct those mistakes and try to go forward. This is an issue that has to be corrected. We’ve got to do the right thing. We’re trying to do the right things.”At the end of the day, when you have to make a decision, you hope you make the right decision. And that’s what I hope I did.”