New Orleans Saints players and at least one assistant coach, defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, maintained a bounty pool of up to $50,000 the last three seasons, the NFL said Friday. Payoffs came for inflicting game-ending injuries.Disgusting. And it resonates in Minnesota:
Among the targets were Brett Favre and Kurt Warner, with "knockouts" worth $1,500 and "cart-offs" $1,000. Payments doubled or tripled for the playoffs, and, according to an investigation by NFL security, pool amounts reached their height in 2009 — the year the Saints won the Super Bowl.
"It was a terrible mistake, and we knew it was wrong while we were doing it," Williams said after the league said between 22 and 27 defensive players were involved in the program he administered, with the knowledge of coach Sean Payton...
The NFL said its findings were corroborated by multiple, independent sources... Saints players contributed cash to the pool, at times large amounts, and in some cases the money pledged was directed against a specific person, the NFL said.
Suddenly, in the Twin Cities, here came those haunting NFC title game images again, a battered Brett Favre being helped off the Superdome field after a third-quarter hit from New Orleans' Bobby McCray and Remi Ayodele. That shot left the quarterback with severe pain in his left ankle, part of an afternoon during which New Orleans walloped Favre the way a bull pummels a rodeo clown.Today the Washington Post reports that the Redskins also had a "bounty" system.
The Saints received three unnecessary-roughness penalties, two for shots on Favre... After that McCray-Ayodele hit, he hobbled around and completed six of 12 passes for 87 yards in the fourth quarter. His interception with 7 seconds left in regulation might have cost the Vikings a Super Bowl trip... This past December, in a loss to New Orleans, running back Adrian Peterson took exception to the way the Saints went after him.
Photo credit: Brian Peterson, Star Tribune.
Update - comments from Fran Tarkenton re NFL football in the 1960s and 70s, published in the Wall Street Journal:
But in those 18 years, I only missed five games due to injury. My opponents wanted to beat me, and they certainly wanted to hit me to achieve that goal—but no one wanted to hurt another player deliberately...More at the link, including a comment that it might have been a "bounty" hit that ended Peyton Manning's career with the Colts.
There was no joy in seeing someone injured on the field of play, even if it gave our team a better chance to win. After all, we wanted to prove that we were the best; and to be the best, you have to beat the best—not beat the JV...
Since news of this story broke last week, I have talked to dozens of former teammates and opponents. On my Sirius XM radio show Monday night, I talked to the toughest of them all, Hall of Famer Chuck Bednarik—who played every snap on both sides of the ball for the Philadelphia Eagles. The response was unanimous. They did not put bounties on other players, and those who do so are not tough—they are cowards...
If they "knew it was wrong while we were doing it," then it was not a terrible mistake. It was a terrible decision to do wrong.
ReplyDelete"Mistake" is just another post-I-got-caught spin.
As I've thought about this today, one aspect that really bothers me is the $$ involved. According to Sports Illustrated (I just looked it up), the average salary for defensive tackles and linebackers last year was $1,200,000. For defensive ends - the ones most likely to "meet at the quarterback," it was $1,500,000.
ReplyDeleteThose guys are getting "bounties of $1,500." To scale that down to my income, it would be like me getting $25 to hurt someone. I just can't conceive of that kind of mindset.
The offenders should be barred from ever playing again. Terrible mistake? Terribly stupid I'd say.
ReplyDeleteThis goes on all the time. They usually don't have official money pools for doing it. Brett Favre commented that he does not think any less of these guys for doing it.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's not the money that was the motivator, it's like getting stickers on your chart when in kindergarten. It's the fact that you earned the sticker (bounty). Silly kids selling out to the machine for some stickers, hmphh!
From: http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/sportspatriots/952331-221/favre-warner-hardly-fazed-by-bounties.html
Retired quarterbacks Brett Favre and Kurt Warner weren’t especially troubled to learn that the New Orleans Saints defensive players may have had a little extra incentive to injure them.
“I’m not (angry),” Favre told Sports Illustrated after the NFL reported that the Saints conducted a “bounty” program. During this program – which lasted from 2009-10 – players were given monetary bonuses for hurting opponents.
“It’s football. I don’t think anything less of those guys,” he said. “Said or unsaid, guys do it anyway. If they can drill you and get you out (of the game), they will.”
For his part, Warner wasn’t convinced that he was being targeted for injury.
“I don’t want to say that there was an attempt to injure, but I definitely think there were games where I could tell you that it seemed that they went beyond what was normal in regards to when they were going to hit me or how they were going to hit me,” Warner told NFL Network on Friday.
“Again, not with the intention, necessarily, of hurting me, but again, knocking me out of my game to get me to think about things differently, and if by chance they hit me and knock me out of the game, maybe that’s a benefit for them.”
Wait a minute - these people are already paid outrageous salaries for what boils down to hurting people, and you're griefing them for... getting paid even more for hurting people?
ReplyDeleteGet a grip, people - it's a GAME, remember?
Maybe if the salaries weren't so idiotically, foolishly out of line with what real people make (yeah, yeah - I know how much the owners, etc. make - that's beside the point that these men are paid to hurt each other) there would be less incentive to injure other players.
And don't even get me started on the viewers. People who would call 911 at the sight of their neighbor maltreating a dog will quite eagerly sit there sucking back their beer and goggling at their TV while grown men pound the snot out of each other, as if this is somehow justified by their million-dollar salaries. Sounds like bread and circuses to me, folks.
These guys are supposed to be GLADIATORS, not nurses in hospital!
DeleteFirst you take their steroids away, then they can't hurt anybody, OH, WAIT...they're losing a few brain cells, can't have that...they should each be sandwiched in futons to prevent injury, see out with a periscope. Give them large doses of estrogen to dampen their aggression, and douse them with oxytocin before the game to encourage closer bonding with their opponents.
Give them machetes, I say. Ice picks. Warhammers! Jets of acid! Explosions of spikes!