The Saints should have lost ALL their draft picks this year & next, as well as...
Head coach blackballed for life.
ALl players involved suspended one year.
Team fined $15,000,000, the fine counted against the salary cap.
Team forfeits one home game for the next two years.
Drew Brees should have been declared an unrestricted free agent.
John and Elizabeth (Liz), with 3 nutty cats
My beloved St. Bernard, Marm, lost him 1/2/12
Current rig:
1992 International Genesis school bus conversion
Old-Biscuit wrote: Does anyone believe the Saints were the only team involved in the 'bounty' pool?
Bounties have existed in the sport since forever. Everyone who doesn't believe so has their head buried deep in the sand. Why the NFL wants to play dumb and pretend this is the first they hear of it is beyond me. They might as well suspend every coach in the NFL and call off the season while they're at it.
While the Saints lose huge in this, inadvertently the Rams lose pretty big too. They now have to look for a new defensive coordinator when all the ones who are worth a darn already have a job. Talk about getting the shaft when you're not even involved in this particular situation.
Does all that crying help change what was going on ? No, IMO, they should shut the team down for 2 years, suspend all players for 2 years, and make the owner sell the team.
See, this is the thing, with all the press about CTE, and the class action law suit pending, Goodell has made it clear that he wants a "kinder, gentler" NFL, or at least one where head hits are no longer going to be allowed, and where the rules have been changed to protect the QB and WR, especially, where leading with the helmet is banned, the word has been put out to teams that these kind of things won't be tolerated. Then, the NFL caught wind about the Saints bounties, and told the Saints to stop. When it became clear that they didn't stop, and that Payton had lied, saying that he knew nothing about the bounties, the NFL produced an email from (convicted felon) Mike Ornstein to Sean Payton contributing $5K to the kitty on Aaron Rodgers head.
Even if Payton did not know, which is quite hard to believe, he should have known.
This is not only a clear case of punishment for Payton's hubris and bad judgement, but a warning to the rest of the NFL that this will no longer be tolerated, and that everyone from the owners down to the players (and ultimately the fans of the team) will pay for any digression.
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