OldMaid

Velet, your opinion is welcomed. Everyone is welcome here at this site. I can promise you that.
I wish other fans from other teams would come by and read. READ. Read and post.

Your points missed.

1-Everyone here is angry at GW. He wasn't even part of this coaching staff the whole time under Sean Payton.
We all were angry when he said about , "Don't forget me shots for PM" to SB media .
People here have slammmed GW over this pass year for an overall lacking defense. Anger is directed where it should be first and foremost.

2-Sean Payton was wrong. We have all said that over and over. How much did he know? When did he know? What did GW hide from him? Why did Sean P, it seemed, fired, well, pushed, well, so say it nicely, had GW resign for St. Louis ? This seemed then it was one of those sweet parting ways of when one side lets the other save face. That SF game is one the Saints should not have lost. They , the Saints' offense, came back. Back And BACK!
Saints defense, ehhh, not so much. No hustling for tackles. Reach. Extend your arms. Run. Nah. A bit on the lazy side.
Sort of throws the Saints almighty and deadly bounty thing out. Really.

3-Vicodin thing. Much to do about nothing because if it was, Gooodell would have.
Showing up late for media day, so what. Saints were the underdog team anyway. They cannot play outside and away from the SD , right. I am sure the media had their hands full with interviewing the SB champs Colts, LOL!

4-All NFL teams were told that the bounty thing was no longer accepted. Stop it. Saints did not. Got punished for it. We Saints fans agree with that. The punishment is way too severe and is one-sided. So GBay did not lie. Coverup. Ok, lying is a bad thing. Still, you don't get by for a wrong if you don't lie about it. Lying makes it twice as worst in punishment. Doing a wrong is still grounds for punishment. You do not get a pass for doing wrong and being honest about it.

5-What , where are these complaints from other teams against the Saints' organization for being consistently dirty? Illegal plays? Huh?
Saints play no more, no less tackle football than any other team.
I noticed you said, "star qb's. " That is what half of this stems from. The Saints had the nerve to tackle Bret Farve. Are we still on this?
Farve's injuries were ugly. No doubt. Those were legal hits. Profootball is a contact and dangerous sport. Even a player acting alone is dangerous. Have you thought about how these guys do rollovers? Backflips? Sideflips? Jump and extend their bodies, propel themselves a few feet? These guys are on an average 6"4, 300 lbs and not are 4"8, 95 lbs. gymnastics pros.

6-The Katrina thing. Yes, the rest of the country is tired of hearing about the Saints' SB win and Katrina. How the team and city bounced back after the hurricane. Yeah, guess what. We here have Katrina overkill too. Poeple here, like my family who lost it, laugh at it. Have moved on. People here have moved on and moved on a few years ago.
I have heard some people say the Saints won because of Katrina. Absurd. So all the NFL teams let the Saints win. The refs did not call penalties on the Saints and the other players all let the Saints win. Ok. Oh boy. When will it end.
Saints were a nothing team in a small market going no where for all those years, even when they had the 8-8, 9-7 , WC playoff games, and no one cared or thought about the Saints. Now, they won the big one and have been at the top for this spell, they have fans and haters. That happens when you win. Part of the game. I get that.
Even the NFL went after tee-shirt venders with court orders to stop sale of silly shirts. Saying has been around for decades. Saints used it for years. Nothing. Saints won the NFC and then, NFL lawyers on notice. Comical.

7-Player safety is utmost concern for NFL under Goodell. I agree.
So why is helmet to helmet head butt ok at times but not all of the times. In SF game, a SF49'er clearly helmet to helmet butted a Saints' player and it was legal. It was a legal hit because it was at a certain game and play. Huh? I found that really confusing. Yeah, our Saints 'player had a lil concussion or at least saw stars. He was dizzy and out.

8-The bounty thing was wrong and wrong in wording. Same thing teams still do but the wording is different.
NFL should be concerned about player safety. No real fans want to see people injured. That is why it is an awful feeling, sickening feeling when a player, your team or not, is lying down and the staff comes out all around him. It is quiet. It always feels like an hour. People cheer when the guy moves his feet side to side. Raises hands. Even if a player is stabilized and carted off, he moves his hands, feet and people cheer. Relief. Who cares if he cannot play profootball anymore. He can walk. Profootball is a temporary career lasting for about, maybe five years for most people.
NFL needs to get tough, strict of rapist, dead beat dads, drug addicts, dog fighters, criminals. I would like to see football, a privilege career, not a right , become this way.

9-You bet we hope the Saints come back strong this year. I think they can. Nothing makes you tougher when you have to be. When you have something to proove, you get tough. Focused.

voodooido

Well spoken but I disagree. GW has been doing this for a while. Where is the punishment of washington, Bills and Tenn? Also, their has been players that KILLED people and got the same time. There has been drug addicts with multiple suspensions with less suspended time. A bounty program is stupid anyway. Why pay people extra when they make 10 mil a year! The NFL has become spoiled. You imagine this punishment in the 70's when the Steelars defense was so dominant? They went out every week to hurt people and admitted it!I think it's crap. Players want to win and want big hits.
If and its a BIG IF a suspension is warranted many other teams left in the wake of GW should get the same punishment.

Marlboro Man

Thanks for posting. Misdirected and misunderstood but fairly descriptive. The Steelers, The Titans, The Ravens, the 49ers, The Eagles, GB, come to mind rather quickly as teams that play the game more violently than all the other teams. You tell me that Harrison and Polomalo don't get paid for those hits with a straight face. But oh no, the Saints better not come up into that eschelon of physical hard hitting teams. Teams started hating us for playing the kind of ball YOUR team has been playing for decades, how dare us. But, here are some points in your post that I don't agree with just to be polite.

1. This is NOT about the Saints being special and not needing to follow the rules. This is about why are the Saints the ONLY ONES that need to follow the rules?

2. See my comments on Harrison and Polomalo and add to that the cheap shot artist Hines Ward. You know lots of teams want those guys thrown out of the league too, so your team isn't spotless and just may not stand up to an investigation but Goodell won't investigate the Steelers, they have too much GLORIUS history.

3. This arrogance by the Saints that you speak of is rampant throughout the league, including the commissioner, not just the Saints, see Oakland, GB, Dallas, Steelers, Ravens, Titans etc., why shouldn't coach Payton refuse to stop doing something that EVERY team in football does, so that he can make his team competitive? If you can't play the same way as the rest of the teams, you can't be competitive.

4. Have you ever considered that Sean Payton was late to media day because he was so nervous that he couldn't sleep. Especially considering the fact that he was going to pull the "AMBUSH" play against one of the BEST teams in football, against the Almighty Peyton Manning? Or that he was up so late with the game plan that he over slept? Yet you, the NFL, the Media and and the rest of the self righteous bumpkins misinterpret is as arrogance? That's pretty presumptious don't you think?

5. Green Bay was found to have run the SAME type of bounty system, no different than ours, and were given a competitive advantage by Goodell and the NFL by being told AFTER THEY WON THE SUPER BOWL. Therefore, GB's Super Bowl is as tainted as ours if you look at it that way. Additionally, Goodell, knowing that they did the SAME THING we and the rest of the league did, chooses to punish ONLY THE SAINTS. You don't see anything wrong with that? Maybe because your team isn't so spotless and cannot stand up to the same scrutiny that we have endured. We were SELECTIVELY signled out for punishment by Goodell. Our anger is VERY WELL PLACED, because until EVERY team is investigated and punished, this incident, yes, incident is purely, selective, discriminating and intended to solely cripple only one team out of 32 teams with the rest given amnesty. That sir is BS.

6. For YEARS we have tried to hire a top DC. We had a chance to hire one of the BEST DC's in the game. One who played defense with physicality and hard hits and a take no prisioners approach, just like the Titans when Williams was there, the Ravens, the Steelers etc., etc., etc. We finally were able to get one of the top defensive coaches in football over the last 12 years. Gregg Williams had to be given $250,000.00 of Sean Paytons money to sign., he had to be given complete control over the defense or he wouldn't sign. We spent the majority of our picks over those 3 years trying to get better defensive players for GW to work with. I guess GW felt that he had to do something to get better play from his existing and the few new players we aquired for him and instituted the bounty system. That bounty system however STILL has not proven intent, nor actuality of our players intentionally going out to hurt any player with any more malice than any other player or team in the league. If you look at game tape you'll see that. We were even complimented for NOT taking a shot on an exposed QB even though it would have been legal with the comment that what we had done showed CLASS, not MALICE. When Goodell came down and told Benson to stop the program, Benson told his GM to see to it. I'm sure Loomis told Sean Payton who at the end of last season was hearing the rumors that GW was going to jump ship if his BFF Jeff Fisher got a HC job and so Payton, trying his best to keep GW so that his players and the new acquisitions they were looking to get this year could grow more in the defensive scheme and so that GW would stay, which as we all saw did not happen. So Sean Payton took a calculated risk of showing his DC bravado and a willingness to stand by him and cover up what he was doing but to tune it down because they were being investigated, but it was already too late, because the SNITCH ratted out the team (You should pray that doesn't happen to YOUR team). So Payton tried to do what he was supposed to do and was told to do while still trying to keep his DC. I agree that it was wrong but I understand why he did it. Again, why do the Saints have to follow rules the rest of the league don't.

7. If Goodell is scared of pending lawsuits from retired players because mommy didn't protect them, his investigation alone could provide him with his defense. Continuing the investigations and going back as far as necessary for his defense, proving bounty systems league wide would make any pending lawsuits moot. There was no need to single out one team in the entire league to punish and make an example of.

8. Finally, if you need evidence of Goodell's and the NFL's manipulation on the outcomes of games you need to watch a lot of game with a non bias attitude and look at what penalties are called against what team and whether that same penalty was not called on the winning team, or the ruling of a fumble that everyone knows was a fumble yet the ball was given to the winning team. This has happened so many times it cannot be just mistakes by the officials. Another example, Ed Hocculi and his crew throw more flags on average per game than any other crew. And finally, look at the 06 Super Bowl.

We appreciate other fans coming to our forums and discussing things, but in this instance your view point is as narrow as those who condemn us without really looking at the facts objectively. We have been through more BS than your team EVER HAS. I know, I was a Steelers fan back in the day before we had a team. I liked them because of Hacksaw Renolds, Mean Joe Green and because the played a tough hard hitting take no prisioners defense, so don't hate us because we're trying to be like you. Also, try looking at this as if it were YOUR team getting destroyed by a selfrighteous punk like Goodell. There was no need for this. He already changed the entire game because of the crybaby Vikings now all he wants is a scapegoat and to make an example of the Saints because he feels like we disrespected him. If we did, it was no more than EVERY other team in the league. You can't make only one team follow rules you don't enforce on every team. Sorry for such a long post.

lumm0x

It's definitely also quite hypocritical how the NFL Network, NFL.com, even NFL Films and pretty much every media outlet highlight and showcase the "huge hits" of the day, week, year, all time, etc. On many of these players were injured, many of them were illegal hits. But I guess it sells and generates them money so it doesn't matter that it's tainted with their hypocrisy.

As said, offering a $1000 spliff to a guy for making the same hit he'd have always made when he makes thousands per minute in his life is like me offering you a penny. It's meaningless to them.

Saints were in the lower half of the league for penalties, they didn't cause anyone injury where games were missed, almost every other team had more suspensions for illegal hits. This situation, while agreeably immoral, affected the game not one little bit. The severity of the punishment is a complete joke. It was an overreacting railroading by an overzealous commish who needed to make an extreme example to avoid looking like a chump himself. He's having a hard time hiding behind his veil because very few think the guy is a good commish.