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By resisting the compulsion to make Bill Parcells an offer he couldn't refuse, and staying in-house to fill the void caused by head coach Sean Payton's season-long suspension, the New Orleans Saints told the football world they're fully capable of handling the bounty scandal without outside intervention.

Joe Vitt is replacing Sean Payton on an interim basis. (US Presswire) That's an admirable sentiment that will play well with the base, but Joe Vitt's appointment as interim head coach also made a pair of troubling, perplexing statements. First, that the Crescent City will be chaos central for the next nine months. Second, that not only will no one responsible for the franchise's predicament be punished internally, but one culpable coach – Vitt – is actually being rewarded.

Translation: We're in a state of confusion, and that's the way we like it down in Louisiana. Take THAT, Roger Goodell.

If Saints owner Tom Benson was looking to send the rest of the league a message that the chastened franchise had a sincere desire to repent and decontaminate, he'd have done anything other than tab Vitt, the team's linebackers coach/assistant head coach, to fill in for Payton.


Put it this way: In terms of improving the team's current image, even Bobby Petrino would have been a cleaner choice.

Joe Vitt's assignment as interim coach sends strong and wrong message from the Saints - Yahoo! Sports

"A Veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a blank check made payable to "The United States of America" for an amount of "up to and including my life."