Thoughts on the New Orleans Saints Getting Spanked

Well, the New Orleans Saints just got hosed for the bounty program they ran over the past few years (including their Super Bowl-winning season), in which defensive players were offered and/or paid sums of money to intentionally injure opposing players at the behest of each other and team coaches. Furthermore, high-ranking members of the Saints coaching staff lied to Saints ownership and, most seriously, to the NFL about the practice.

As most of you follow such things have most likely already seen, here are the stipulations of the punishment that came down from Commish Roger Goodell (with more player-specific fines and suspensions coming):

• Former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (now with the St. Louis Rams) suspended indefinitely
• Head coach Sean Payton suspended for the 2012 season
• General manager Mickey Loomis suspended for eight (8) games
• Linebackers coach Joe Vitt suspended for six (6) games
• The team is stripped of its 2012 second round pick and 2013 second round pick in the NFL Draft
• The team is fined $500,000

Thoughts?

I don't know if any of this has been discussed in the Shoutbox over the past 24 hours or what, but I follow a number of NFL sites, columns, message boards, etc., and the talk is pretty spirited on this punishment. Obviously, Saints fans are up in arms and ready to riot, but the general feel I get from the rest of the league's fanbase (and the media) is that the above was not altogether unexpected or unwarranted.

So, Mofos... do you agree with Goodell's smackdown? Disagree? Too harsh? Not harsh enough?

TBH, I was ready to not think about football for a while, so i haven't been keeping up. I will read up a bit and get back to you!

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They were spanked? Is there video of this?

As usual, I'm still on the fence in this. We are being told that there is no shadow of doubt about this and I guess I have no reason not to believe EVERYTHING that the media is telling me but I also pay pretty close attention to my local/national radio talk shows here and while opinions from regular talk show hosts don't really tend to influence me, ex-players do. I have yet to hear a bunch of ex-players come out and repeatedly say that this "Bounty program" is reprehensible and for that matter even possible.

There's several defensive players here in Seattle that are on the radio and they continue to maintain many teams out there do things like this. What "like this" means exactly, we'll never know unless we're NFL players.

The NFL wants to score more points and the only way to do that is to make the game "safer" which in itself is laughable. So far they have as of last year even guys like T-Jack were having 300 yard days and so were many other no-name, no-neck lookin' dudes. And that's fine I reckon.

I think the NFL is hiding a bit behind this supposed "scandal" in order to continue to make the game safer for players. The reason I scoff at that though, is simply because that much like in the real world, when a team or company is done with a player he is discarded and his healthcare and quality of life after football is usually filled with pain and most NFL vets receive extremely little recompense for a vast number of very serious problems. This is easily remedied of course but would cut into the vast profits that the NFL is raking in. Sad, but true.

So, what do I think of the punishment? I guess I think it's too harsh.

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We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...

Doesn't matter if other teams may have done the same thing, if true. They shouldn't have been doing it. They won't be doing it in the future.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

I was particularly interested to hear what Matt Bowen, who's currently a columnist for National Football Post, had to say, since he played safety under Gregg Williams in Washington.

As you might expect, he admitted that it happened when he was there and believes it's an ugly but necessary part of the game.

Yes, it's probably true that the "culture," as he calls it, of targeting players has been a part of the NFL for longer than any current player or coach has been around. But because Bowen was a player, I don't think he sees the real issue. His job, especially as a defensive player, was to stop the offense, sometimes at any cost. But he wasn't doing his job in a vacuum.

Sure, it's a violent sport and injuries do happen, but football is expected to be played within the confines of a "best practice" set of rules, where the best chance for safety and professionalism is routinely pursued. I think because the NFL is so microcosmic, players forget that the league (and all its employees) still reside in the United States and are potentially subject to its laws when those rules are subverted.

Yeah, as far as I can tell nobody's disputing the facts here, just how to react to them.

I think it's a little harsh, but that something fairly stern was necessary. It's one thing to reward big hits; there's a serious argument to be had about whether or not that's an intrinsic part of the game. But my understanding is that the bounty rewards were specifically for knocking players out of the game. That's not just hard-hitting football, that's a direct incentive to injure. Forget whether or not we like football being toned down or not, that's just bad sportsmanship, even without the money.

Well said.

Personally, I feel the punishment is fair and warranted, especially since Sean Payton, Mickey Loomis, and Gregg Williams lied to the NFL and covered up a practice they freely admit was wrong. Had they cooperated with the NFL a year ago, the whipping might not have been so severe (except for maybe Williams, who deserves to be out of the league for a season, at least).

It's now come to light that the Green Bay Packers employed a bounty system in 2007, but their system had more to do with rewarding players for holding teams to low rushing yards or a certain number of points, rather than intentionally targeting players for injury. They cooperated with the NFL and discarded the practice. That, in my view, is absolutely the way the Saints should have conducted themselves all along, and I applaud the Packers for being a classier club.

And being a Vikings fan, I'm sure that was deeply painful to say.

You have no idea.

So, a couple of folks on the radio here have been discussing the differences and what nots of the "spy-gate" incident and the relative ease that Belichik and the Pats got off and the sort of harsh of at least much stiffer penalty here. The crux I gathered that they were sort of boiling this down to was that the NFL may be saying to its fans that while cheating is "frowned upon" its not really punishable and therefore OK. But if you try to hurt someone by golly you will pay. Is that a good message? I don't know, still not sure I really have a problem with this to begin with. And I still have a bit of a problem with how worked some people tend to get over stuff like this too. There's been many, many just plain mean individuals that have played this game over the years and many of them have admitted to trying to hurt people, should we go back and fine them and the teams they played for too?

I don't think the NFL needs to go back and punish past offenders. It's not hypocritical to say, "Yes, we believe these practices have been a part of the league for decades. But we've come to believe it's not appropriate for the game or its players, and so it's time to dispel the practice."

Of course, for Goodell, it really isn't as much about making the game safer as it is appearing to make the game safer, so that he doesn't have to endure any more scrutiny from the federal government.

That said, I do believe Belichick and the Patriots absolutely got off too easy a few years ago. Deliberate intent to injure is obviously the more egregious offense here, but cheating has no place in the league either... in any form. Belichick should have been given a year's suspension too.