New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - USA Today/Saints Wire: Sean Payton says two NFL owners lobbied for him to be fired after BountyGate

By: Tanya Ray Fox| (10/03/2018 3:38pm CST)

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has mismanaged the disciplinary aspect of his job so egregiously over the last handful of seasons that BountyGate, news of which broke just six-and-a-half years ago, feels like it happened in an entirely different era.

The New Orleans Saints found themselves embroiled in the national scandal early in 2012 when the league alleged that their defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, had been running a bounty program in which players were rewarded financially for injuring opposing players in game. Per their investigation, the bounty system was in operation for the three seasons from 2009 to 2011 — the most successful stretch in franchise history.

Perhaps most damning was their conclusion that head coach Sean Payton had known about the bounties and had subsequently tried to cover it up once the NFL found out. For his role in allowing the payments, and his insubordination after the fact, Payton was suspended for the entire 2012 season.

He recently sat down for an interview on In Depth with Graham Bensinger to discuss the fallout from what he insists was a rigged investigation.

“One of the things that we’ve seen, and it’s just the truth, our league’s no different than a large political party,” said Payton. “They’re experts at pushing their message through the media. Look, it was in full force — ‘it’ meaning the league, the machine, in pushing their message out early.”

Payton continue to deflect, talking in circles after Bensinger asked him about his reaction to the report that he’d led a cover up.

“It was brutal. It was such a rigged – I can’t even begin to tell you,” Payton said. “The more and more people looked at it and the more and more people looked at where the information came from, you know the disgruntled Saints employee who happened to miss two weeks of work and never reported to any of us where he was, that we knew we were firing at the end of the season. The disgruntled employee who happens to work for the league now, like just got hired last year. And we get wind from former league employees saying that this was a deal done.”

Despite his implication that an angry former staffer had fed the league false information, Payton did admit that the team bore some blame for how they reacted to the ordeal.

“And the Saints, we knew better too. We’ve done a lot of things well, but as an organization we didn’t handle that investigation very well at all.”

Payton went on to acknowledge his anger after finding out he’d been suspended, and he claimed that former Saints owner, the late Tom Benson, told him that two NFL team owners had called to lobby for the head coach to be fired.

“When you say a year and you’re not able to talk to any other coach, and you’re not able to talk to any other player, and you know that the league office actually contacted two other owners to talk to Mr. Benson about finding a way to have you fired – like, they are trying to break you.

I just know that the late Mr. Benson to his credit came to me and said ‘I’ve just gotten two calls from two other league owners’ and I knew that came from the league office. I remember coming back that year and being at the owners meetings.”

While Payton doesn’t name the owners, the league’s report included details on how many players were allegedly involved in target hits over the years, and specific opposing players who were targeted — a list that multiple quarterbacks, notably Kurt Warner, Aaron Rodgers, Cam Newton and Matt Hasselbeck.

Since BountyGate, Goodell and the NFL have been caught covering up the Ray Rice domestic violence video and have been lambasted for allowing Greg Hardy to play despite hard evidence that he’d violently assaulted his girlfriend. They forced the Patriots to endure the years-long DeflateGate saga, issuing historic sanctions just to make a point about cooperating with league investigations. They also successfully blackballed Colin Kaepernick while he was still in his physical prime just because he peacefully protested police brutality during the national anthem.

All of this is to say that while Payton is quite evasive and unwilling to take much responsibility for the whole affair, the league’s credibility when it comes to disciplinary action BountyGate is practically non-existent.

You can watch his full interview with Graham Bensinger below.

Sean Payton on Bountygate: NFL was trying to break me - YouTube