In a sense, I believe Brees. When I first heard Turley's remarks I was like, well, okay, sure. I get why you want to hear his side but I doubt he knew.

Offensive and defensive meetings are separate from one another and even during practice, as you should know, offense is with their coaches and players, defense is with theirs unless it's a team scrimmage or drill of some sort.

A team meeting or during the team scrimmage would likely be the only time he would have heard about it. A team meeting would be doubtful because that's when they'd review the tape and game plans with one another. Don't see it happening there unless it's the "hit the quarterback every time."

This is clearly a defensive issue because no one on the offense seems to know about it. Furthermore this is likely not even discussed at defensive meetings. Why? Only 22-27 people know about this. If it was discussed then, I'd think that more than 22-27 would be named considering some of them are Dennis Allen, Fujita, Hargrove, etc. Don't you? This is clearly a group of friends, like how lets say Jenkins, Harper, Vilma, and Smith hang out.

Did Williams have a part in bounties? In his statement he mentioned he acknowledged the pay for performance aspect, but not the bounty if I remember correctly. So I'd say no. The only person who they've mentioned specifically as far as a bounty is Vilma and Favre. (As my article states, no flags/fines were handed out for the unsportsmanlike conduct penalties so they were fine there.) If the NFL thought this was an issue before the investigation, they surely would be fined more.

It isn't like the Saints walked around and announced that they were paying players for hurting someone. Don't you think every time a player hits Brees, Rodgers, Brady, they'd love nothing more than to knock the star player out of the game?

I stand by Brees comments saying he knew nothing of the "real existence." -Real- existence? Well, the NFL set out notes to all 32 teams each season about this issue. So to him, he knew of it, but didn't know it exactly existed. I bet that's true. Also, if Brees knew something I'm sure the NFL would LOVE to include his name in their report due to im being a member of the NFLPA committee. I bet his knowledge was one of the first things they looked at.

Sorry for the wall of text.

Yes, I see all that - and I agree that there don't seem to have been all taht much of a difference in NO's play compared with other teams - but that isn't the whole point. The way the NFL sees it, especially as they're obsessed with player safety, is that your coaches were sending out players instructing them in so many words to deliberately injure opponents - and unless your coaches put a disclaimer in there specifically stating "but if you do it and get flagged you're out of the game" or some such disclaimer to ensure the players know foul play is frowned on, the BFL will assume it's encouraging foul play. And they'll hit you hard. Regardless of whether other teams are doing the same thing and aren't stupid enough to do it in writing.

We will survive & thrive.

The point is you can't have an incentive program what so ever.

Forget the taking a player out or carting him off bounty's take all that out of the equation.

The Saints will still be GUILTY.

By the NFL/CBA rules... YOU CAN NOT HAVE AN INCENTIVE PROGRAM THAT REWARDS PLAYERS ON THEIR PERFORMANCE DURING A GAME.

The rule includes everything from a INT, A TD, A Fumble the rule is for ANYTHING. Players can't do it without team officials or with team officials. The Saints are way guilty of this.

BUT here is the kicker so is EVERY other team and most every player who has ever played the game if you listen to them on the ESPN panels they have had on this Everyone admitted especially Mike Golic.

Also lets not fool ourselves that Bree's would or wouldn't know about it.

It is true that for example I was in Saints training camp as a RB back in 97. Yes we were in film study and meetings just the RB's. We had Offensive meetings as a unit as well but none included the D that is true.

But it is also true that you do have TEAM MEETINGS, you also have weight room training, dinners, ect with the whole team. You do mingle together.
So its not impossible to know some of these things going on. Especially when Vilma carries 10K into the locker room, that word would spread and I find it hard to believe that you wouldn't go look at it if nothing else.

A good portion of the poo that the media is spewing is "test-balloon" journalism. You write an article or provide a soundbite and see how the public reacts.

Some media folks "carry water" for the NFL in exchange for access. If enough chatter is released about a certain thing with a certain tone? The public gets desensitized. When the outcome is released? It's no surprise.

Marketing 101. The real test is how much do the cabal, excuse me, the owners as a collective group, want to set an unenforceable precedent?