The news of the New Orleans Saints “bounty” program is pretty sickening, especially after they have been called out on it before.
The NFL investigated them once a couple of years ago, after owner Tom Benson told general manager Mickey Loomis to have it stopped, and worst of all, long after it had stopped working.
After this series of events, the NFL plans to keep looking at plays from recent seasons after a league investigation found the New Orleans Saints paid bounties to players for knocking opponents out of games.
Many of these plays are quite obvious, especially “cheap shots” during the Saints Super Bowl run in 2009 on quarterbacks Kurt Warner and Brett Favre.
See for yourself:
That is most definitely a cheap shot, which virtually ended Warner’s career. After the playoffs, Saints defensive end Bobby McCray was fined $20,000 for hits on both Warner and Brett Favre, deservedly so.
Everyone knows that there are going to be some HUGE fines levied on the Saints, arguably the biggest fines in NFL history. This is a lot worse than the 2007 Spygate scandal and the New England Patriots.
But the bottom line is, they’re both terrible.
Based on how stupid the Saints organization is, they deserve to lose their first-round draft pick this year – except that they’ve already traded it to the New England Patriots. But I don’t think that shouldn’t stop commissioner Roger Goodell from taking a couple of picks this year or taking the 2013 first-rounder as the starting point for punishment.
And that’s only the start of it. The Saints deserve a hefty fine as a team, head coach Sean Payton deserves another one, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (the orchestrator of the “bounty” program) now with the St. Louis Rams, deserves a big fine and each of the assistant coaches who participated deserve to at least be docked money as well. On top of that, Loomis deserves to be fined and/or fired since he disobeyed an order from the owner.
Based on how brutal the game of football already is, who in their right mind thought a bounty program would be beneficial. What if someone had a career-ending injury? What if someone ended up paralyzed? This is something the league will definitely review when handing out the fines.
Everyone who was involved in this deserves to pay for their stupidity, and other organizations should take note.
And now it has come out that the Redskins did the same thing under Defensive Coordinator Gregg Williams. The last thing the Skins need right now is bad publicity or to get in trouble with the NFL. It will be interesting to see what happens with the Saints and Skins, and if we find out about more teams with similar problems.
I absolutely agree that there should be harsh penalties for this “program.” It’s pretty outrageous that football players are encouraged to get “kill shots” in an already violent game. And their incentives were small amounts of money? Last time I checked, these guys are millionaires, do they really need that extra grand?
Like you said, what if there was a season ending injury? Remember that shot on Kurt Warner? Where he left the game, came back only to leave again? He ended up retiring that season so I think we’ve seen the consequences. The Saints, especially Gregg Williams, will probably and hopefully receive a punishment not only because they deserve it, but to set an example for other teams.