Timeline for Saints punishment
 

Jay Glazer is reporting that the league will announce the Saints punishment before the Owner's Meeting on March 25-26?, (audio on clip is garbled)

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This better not end with just the Saints. This investigation better be league wide.

If any other team/s doing the same thing were dumb enough to put their bounty records on paper, they made it to the nearest shredding machine 2 seconds after the story about the Saints broke!!

Now we wait! Again with the waiting! We need some answers soon and not about Drew getting tagged.

I am starting to see this as the Saints going after GW.

Apparently the Saints organization/owner was very very willing to help and gave up important information in all this and it clearly points at GW's.

I don't like to speculate.

But it just seems a little suspicious the Saints may have gone after GW for this...

I hope this report is very telling and those individuals should be targeted for penalties and fines not the organization as a whole. Slap the Saints on the wrist as a warning to everyone but then slam the individuals... like perhaps Vilma, and GW.

Won't work.

Someone will point out that the Saints should have done their homework better on GW; Payton adding his own money to the offer to sign Williams doesn't help things.

Coupled with the facts that Loomis and SP knew about it for 3 yrs and didn't stop it is more damning AND that Benson told Loomis to stop it immediately back in '09 may seal his fate.

SP may be able to distance himself from it by saying he doesn't have much interaction with the defense.

The Saints paying to injure another player is what makes my guts knot up.

What's going to make this bad for the Saints are a number of things if everything that was in the report I read have been true. It's a perfect storm to be bad, and that sucks.
1. The NFL has placed an emphasis on increasing player safety.
2. The Saints lied back after the first time it was investigated.
3. The offenses according to NFL continued for 2 yrs after the first investigation.
4. Knowledge by Loomis and Peyton will be viewed as organizational complicity.
5. While this practice is likely common among other teams, it's like catching a cheater in school. They will make an example to discourage others from trying to keep getting away with it.

That being said, Goodell has never been consistent in anything he does- so there's no telling what he will do, but I'm expecting the worse which will likely include draft pick forfeiture, fines, and possible suspensions.

It would make my stomach knot up if we actually injured another player because of this bounty. Did we? Who was it? Who got said monies? What game did it happen in? How much money did any particular player get on this side bet and for what plays?

To many questions with no answers as of now to accurately speculate anything.

The object of the exercise was to injure another player; Haynesworth would have racked up big-time if the Saints had signed him!!

Take the penalty you might as well kiss this years draft goodbye!!! They can take whatever the hell they want. We were the champs that year!!!!! To late to overturn that!!!!

With so much emphasis given to the single fact that delivering a hit which resulted in an opposing player being injured was rewarded - I wonder how many different "performances" were on that ticket?

What were the rewards for all of the on-field performances and if they were ranked what was the order they were listed in?

For all we know, maybe the highest reward was payed for a pick 6 and the "stretcher hit" was just an afterthought - until of course Vilma's personal bounty declaration in the Conference Finals, if that is true.

In my opinion, this case should be more about the reward system itself and how it violates the salary rules - not about what individual performances were included in those that would be rewarded.

Hopefully they dock our 2012 1st round pick, and it screws the Pats.

Wouldn't that be funny? :goodidea:

I really, really, really wish everything would've come out all at once. This waiting and wondering what they are going to do is going to kill me. I really think Goodell is going to hurt us bad, as this played right into his pet project.

As an aside, I am really ready for someone to leak who the snitch was.

I agree with one, WhoDate and Marlbaro.
Saints did it. I get that.
The other 32 , however many teams did it also.
Dungy: Gregg Williams

This is just one of the articles telling that this has been going around for years.

I agree other teams have broken a few shredders, burned the motor out since this hit the news. If they put it on paper, they have no papertrail now. There is no proof, BUT, there are a few articles out there we all have read of other teams talking about this. Start the investigation there with these guys who gave interviews about it and then their teams.

Cheating is far worse than a bounty pool IMO and both the 49ers and Patriots got off lightly. 49ers were docked a 5th and 3rd round pick and were also fined $300,000.

Bill Belichick was fined $500,000 (the max allowed), fined the Patriots $250,000, and docked a 1st round pick.

Whatever happens it better be much less than these two incidents considering the Saints have been one of the least penalized teams on the field for illegal hits. At the end of the day, the Saints were better at documenting their finances for the pool than actually completing the tasks of taking players out of games. What players careers were ruined by the Saints for illegal hits? None. 0. The Warner hit; legal. Favre got back in the game. There is simply not enough production from the bounty to warrant more than monetary fines.

The Saints did no such thing. This bounty systems are funded by the players themselves. The payouts come from a pool that is funded by entry fees, to become eligible to collect, and kangaroo court fines levied for various offenses during the year, such as being late for meetings, buses and such.

It's like a bunch of us going out to the golf course and having side bets on who gets the first birdie, etc.

Once again, it does not affect the salary rules. It is a pool of the player's own money. And it isn't for the money. The money is minimal. It is for the glory. And don't think for a minute that a player doesn't get high fives when a play that lays out an opponent comes up during film study in every film room in the league.

The fact that f.e. GW himself put money into the pool without having any possibility of collecting anything out of it changes the nature of the system quite a bit. The size of the "rewards" or the "bounties" is beside the point, because it is more about the principle of the activity.

The reason why I said the issue should be more about the existence of the pool violating the salary cap laws is because many of the news articles and even NFL statements have stated that it did so. I didn't come up with this on my own - trust me, I'm not that smart. ;-)

I personally don't have any disillusions regarding this matter, myself being involved in something similar in my hockey playing days - big hits are something that warrant respect from other guys on the team and are also a source of pride to one self.

It's the year 2012 ... more likely it'll be a form of Supplice as punishment!