NFL: Saints Bounty Thread

[AsylumGuido]

(10-26-2012 03:17 PM)JDaveG Wrote:  The point is the explanation provided doesn't square with the use of the term. It's too convenient by half.

Even if it was intended by Williams (or, alternatively, understood by the players) to be hyperbole, there's a half a world of hyperbole between "leaves the game for 1 play" (which, BTW, is still an "injury," unless they also paid for having their helmet come off or whatever) and "cart off."

It's like someone busting into your office and pointing a pistol at you and saying "I'm going to kill you," and then when the cops show up saying "what I really meant was I'm really disappointed in his take on the Saints bounty scandal." It's so far from what they actually said and did that no one would believe it. Rightly so.

If it was meant to be literal one would think that there would have been more injuries in Saints games than others, wouldn't you? Numbers have been shown that this is not the case. In fact, someone said that the only two players carted off from a Saints game between 2009 and 2011 were both Saints players.

But, the fact is that the Saints were punished for supposedly having a bounty program that targeted specific players for intentional injury. The fact that they had a pool that paid for big plays including big hits that could have resulted in incidental injury does not meet that definition. While you, or others, may have a problem with it, what they had going on was not what they were punished for nor was it what they were even accused of doing.