NFL: Saints Bounty Thread

[AsylumGuido]

Here is an interesting related story from the Times-Picayune by Jeff Duncan.

New York Giants, Jets have flirted with behavior that comes close to imperiling player safety

The semantic hinge on which the case against the Saints swings - between "pay for performance" and "bounty" - has taken on a geographic dimension, too, as the pushback against player discipline mounts. Both New York professional football franchises, including the Super Bowl champion New York Giants, have flirted with behavior that appears to veer dangerously close to imperiling player safety.

York Jets Coach Rex Ryan wrote in his 2010 book that the Jets put 'dots' on players they wanted to knock out of the game.

It is that sacrosanct theme, given the growing caseload of lawsuits filed against the NFL by former players alleging indifferent attention to health issues, that drove Commissioner Roger Goodell to mete out severe punishments to New Orleans, including a full season suspension without pay for Coach Sean Payton and linebacker Jonathan Vilma.

In the case of the Giants and Jets, however, there was no league discipline.

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he first case involves the Giants and it closely dovetails the Saints on the timeline. One week after the Saints lost to the 49ers in a divisional playoff game that was preceded by former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams now-infamous pre-game speech to the defense, the Giants beat San Francisco in the NFC championship game.

That conference title game turned on a fumbled punt in overtime, and afterward some Giants special teams players said the turnover was a dividend they actively sought. 49ers backup return man Kyle Williams has suffered concussions - the injury at the very heart of much of the growing litigation the NFL faces - and he wound up muffing one punt return and then making the critical fumble.

After the game, Giants rookie linebacker Jacquian Williams said, "the thing is, we knew he had four concussions so that was our biggest thing, to take him out of the game." Devin Thomas, who recovered Williams' miscues, echoed that theme.

"He's had a lot of concussions," Thomas said. "We were just like, 'we've got to put a hit on that guy.'" Although there is no financial element to the Giants gameplan - a component of the Saints' scheme that also runs afoul of NFL rules and its collective bargaining agreement - the sentiments expressed by the Giants players dovetail with those voiced by Gregg Williams in the pre-playoff tape and, to a less explicit extent, with what former Saints players like safety Darren Sharper have said went on with the Saints. Vilma, Saints defensive end Will Smith, and interim Coach Joe Vitt, who will serve a six-game suspension when the regular season begins, have in their public comments also tried to draw a line between football's inherent violence and solicited viciousness. In his first press conference as acting head coach, Vitt made it clear he regretted some of the language employed in Saints meeting rooms, but vigorously denied he ever coached or encouraged a player to deliberately hurt an opponent.

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The case of the Jets predates the Saints' bounty scandal, but it has been given new life in a post by Mike Florio on ProFootballTalk last Sunday night. Florio cited a passage from "Play Like You Mean It," a 2010 book by Jets Coach Rex Ryan:

"Each game we might also designate an opposing player with a dot," Ryan wrote in a chapter entitled, 'Blunt Force Trauma.' "Players don't want to be dotted by the New York Jets, because that means we want that dude knocked out of the game. Of course, it has to be legal and by the book. We don't play dirty, and no way will we intentionally hurt a player with an illegal, cheap shot. We dot players fair and square. There are players out there who think they are badasses, and you just might see two of our players knock the hell out of him. Pow! Pow! That's our mentality. Everything we do is aggressive and, hey, we may make a mistake, but we will go one hundred miles per hour and we will knock the hell out of you. Big hits create turnovers. You haven't been Punked -- you've been Dotted!"