I say we go with Brees contract and let Goodell work around us. While he wants to punish those players, the LAST thing he wants to do is cause us to not be able to field a defense to play regular season games.

If we do not then we will be forced to screw with Brees contract.

Get the contract behind us, shore up what we need to as if nothing is going on... Then look at Goodell and say, sorry bud we do not have any thing to work with so you are going to have to either not use player suspensions as punishment, or you are going to have to stagger them so we can still play.

I think the suspensions are on the extreme back burner for the league right now -- I'm thinking they may not even be announced until the season is underway! It's become perfectly clear to me, that the intent is not to punish the Saints, or make them less competitive on the field, or to get this bounty issue settled and over with -- the intent is for Goodell and the league to make Mickey Loomis's position so difficult and untenable with the Saints, so difficult for him, that Tom Benson will have to move to fire him... that's what they want.

It's clear the league wants Loomis gone... They had hoped that Payton would get immediately fired when his suspension came down, as well, and when that didn't work out the way they expected, and Benson stood behind them in support of them, the league actually changed Payton's suspension from one year to "after one year he can apply to be reinstated." If it doesn't get the desired result, they immediately move the goalposts, to make it harder for Sean Payton to exist as coach of the Saints. Same will happen with Loomis.

The league was not expecting Benson to go rogue and be such an iconoclast, Al Davis, "I'm gonna do things my way" type of owner and stand up for his staff...they thought he was going to fold and lose his guts over the scandal, and fire everybody involved. When that didn't work as planned, it was on to "Plan B" for the league. But it's pretty obvious that the target in all this is actually Mickey Loomis, not the players.

And of course it affects Drew's deal -- that's what the league wants it to do, by hanging these suspensions over our heads, Loomis can't get Drew's deal done because of the cap space, and the league knows that. They want to make life impossible for Mickey Loomis to do his job, because they want him gone. It's pretty simple really.

I agree with this. Believe Goodell knows this and is further trying to keep us out of the Super Bowl and dragging ass with lall these distractions that should have been handled months ago. It took no time at all to lay the hammer down on our coaches, why the delay here. Anyway if he does issue suspensions they will most likely be imposed after this year by the time the NFLPA gets ahold of him. **** Goodell and the football plugged up his ass.