NFL: Saints Bounty Thread

[RockHoward]

(05-09-2012 10:17 PM)AsylumGuido Wrote:  Wait a minute! As you said, even if true, what happened to the claims that it was an organized bounty system covering the three years of 2009-2011? So who is lying? The Saints are being punished for this three year organized plan.

Which is it? Or is it neither since neither has any proof?

You are starting to get the picture, huh? Goodell and the league jumped out making claims that could not be supported for the sole purpose of fighting against the onslaught of lawsuits.

OK that concedes my point that the players are lying. Therefore the existence of the bounty program is no longer a mater of conjecture. Now we look at the additional evidence of cover-ups and other statements by the coaches and the timing of those makes it clear that the program was not explicitly curtailed as the NFL requested, but only taken underground as Payton commanded.

In summary the players were directly involved in the program and even raised the stakes during the 2009 playoffs. After that the program was never officially ended but it was made clear to key players that further discussion of it was verbotten. Thereafter the coaches only eluded to the bounties as a prelude to key games and took care not to mention them explicitly. Still the offers were still on the table and payments were still made for big plays even if no one collected any of the injury/cart-off bounties.

Case closed.