This is one of the most disturbing thing I've ever heard in pro football since the early 70's. I think it will change pro football forever. Leagues will have to put clear rules in place to protect themselves from psychotic individuals.
[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fhnn9kbqQUA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... hnn9kbqQUA[/url]He’ll either be out of football forever, or the next head coach of the Raiders.
OK, that was legitimately funny. :lol:
I can't see any hope in hell that GODdell will come back on his decision. Former players are looking at suing the league for head injuries and these guys in New Orleans just gave them all the proof they need. You got to wonder what the players were thinking to themselves when their coach was telling them to tear ACL's and attempt to inflict head injuries on fellow players ? Pretty sick stuff.
What leaves me scratching my head is the cash payments as bounty incentives. NFL players make great money, not chump change. If you're a starting defensive lineman in the NFL, you are set for life if you have even a five-year career. Why on earth would you be exposing yourself to lawsuits and suspensions / bans for a few thousand dollars?
I think that’s where the young guys trying to establish themselves and get in the coach’s good books come in. They are the vulnerable ones. In the audio Williams says to the players “The ties are watching” He’s telling the players that the guys signing the cheques are expecting this, he brings the team’s management into this rightly or wrongly. That’s how he sets up the entire 3 minute speach. Considering he knew he was leaving for another team his players knew he was not talking about his job being on the line but theirs.
I think most players ignored the maniac but it only takes one guy out of the 27 hitting the field to accomplish your goal.
I am curious since we have a few legal experts here. Is enciting someone who 'works" for you and under your “control” to injure someone, could that be considered a criminal act ? There is not anything in the rules that these players sign to play in that they are to try to injure or that their opponent is trying to cause specific injuries ??? Williams names specific players and targets specific parts of their anatomy after they’ve sustained injuries to those specific “parts”.
The other part is if you injure a player which in football may very well be accidental and coindidental with Williams demands and you “take the money” could you be exposed to criminal prosecution ?
Not a legal expert at all, but seems like Williams's actions would fall into the category of conspiracy, right? He is basically orchestrating violence (assault, etc.) against players of rival NFL teams.
...I can't remember for sure (and too lazy to go check) but wasnt' Orca Bay and Marc Crawford named as defendants along with Bertuzzi for the Steve Moore affair? if so then there could be legal precedent for what you are referring to HfxTC
From what I could find Crawford was let off the hook but this is what Bertuzzi is looking at.
The trial over former Colorado Avalanche forward [b]Steve Moore's $38 million lawsuit against Bertuzzi[/b], for that career-ending attack in 2004, would have started on Oct. 12 if Bertuzzi didn't have an NHL contract after this season; now, it begins on Sept. 24, as the legal wrangling continues over who will be liable if Moore wins the case.The League and the team's insurer is refusing to pay claiming they don't cover assault. Kind of puts in perspective how expensive these things can get for the individuals and organizations who employ them.
And to think that I had so much respect for the Saints organization these past few years.
Mr Williams says that he don't apologize for how his defense competes. He says that respect comes from fear and that this is how you get respect in this league. Well I don't respect him one bit at all, nor the way he expects his defense to compete. I don't need his apology. It don't mean s**t.
What a complete fing ahle.
The Saints are now my least favorite team. But it does make me wonder now, to what extent similar talk goes on in the other 31 locker rooms. Or the 8 Canadian ones for that matter.
Well I think after this you can expect the NFL to make itself crystal clear that this stuff will not be allowed. I would not be surprised if they warn teams that future offenders will be banished from the league for good. I think Mike Kelly will be employed before Williams ever works Pro or NCAA football every again.
From a recent column by Doug Brown:
Lo and behold, there, amongst all of my spring cleaning, was my NFL memorabilia pile from my 3.41 seasons down south, and wouldn't you know it, I discovered some critical pieces of evidence relevant to this case.I had a hobby in the NFL that I’m not very proud about divulging.
I used to keep all of my defensive playbooks.
At the end of the year when you are supposed to hand them in, or when you are released from a team and you are supposed to give them back, I never did.
I wasn’t sure at the time if I wanted to get into coaching after my career, so I figured if one day I did, it might be helpful to have all of these brilliant defensive schematics at my fingertips.
I have a playbook from the Bills in 1997, I have two playbooks under one co-ordinator from 1998 and 1999 with the Redskins, and I have another Redskins playbook from another coach in 2000.
You won’t believe what I found in each and every one of them: transcriptions of bounty bonanzas.
Such damning evidence it is, if Roger is going suspend Sean Payton for a year for allowing a program where players are paid to hurt other players, he is gonna be awfully busy the next little while.
In each and every one of these playbooks I possess, you can find explicit instructions for all the defensive players to impact their opponent to the greatest degree possible and at every opportunity. Now I don’t know about you, Roger, but that sounds to me like these coaches wanted me to hurt the other players that we faced.
I don’t know what the words, “punish,” “explode into,” and, “gang tackle,” mean to you, but to me, the results of following these directions could and would result in somebody getting hurt. And these weren’t just words, these are descriptions of the techniques and style of play we were taught in practice.
Alas, these instructions were only words on a page within a handbook, right?
Every time I was offered a bounty for taking someone out during the course of my career, I always scoffed at the idea because it was already something I was inherently being paid to do by the team I played for. Not illegally, not outside of the rules of the game, but every time a defensive player hits an offensive player, he hopes it is done with enough force to take him out of the game and help his team win.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/football/goodell-never-played-in-the-nfl-and-doesnt-get-it-146059925.html
I haven’t been following the details of this case but in any of the tapes, videos, whatever does any coach specifically say they wanted the players to make illegal or dirty hits? Is there any evidence that shows that payments under this bounty system were made for illegal hits?
I’m just wondering because we hear players making comments about taking out the QB all the time and when anyone complains about it they are called whiners because trying to take out the QB is part of the game.
What looks even better on his is my 49ers beat the Saints without a single injury. I hope he never gets a job coaching anything again. Besides, playing to injure often means you are hurting your own team. You're opening yourself up to so many penalties and if every play you're looking to get a cheap lick on the QB or specfic players, good OC's will pickup on it and start using that behaviour against your defense.
Hit the link at the top and listen to the audio. He CLEARLY names the RB by jersey# and tells his players to hit him out of bounds. He CLEARLY asks his players if Crabtree will still be a prima donna if they tear his ACL. He CLEARLY instructs his players to go for Frank Gore’s head, and CLEARLY instructs his players to get Frank Gore running sideways, and wants his head pointing sideways, quite obviously because he’s looking for an earhole shot. he CLEARLY instructs his players to test #10’s (Kyle Williams’) concussion history.
He LOUDLY and CLEARLY instructs his players to commit major fouls in order to severely injure the opponent’s skill players. MAJOR FOULS. These penalties are considered major fouls because they are beyond simple cheating (holding, pass interference etc), they are acts that have been deemed over the past decades as not belonging in the game.
Disgusting stuff as far as I’m concerned.
I read an article over the weekend about that line of thought as written by a former FBI agent.
Basically even though Williams could be charged for conspiracy under a US federal statute called the Hobbs Act,
( here is an excellent description via Wiki: Hobbs Act - Wikipedia )
the author wrote that it would be a very difficult case to prove because also any purported bounties would have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to also have caused specific injuries to specific players so as to ultimately interfere with interstate commerce.
Unlawfully impeding or hindering interstate commerce, by the interpretation of the US Supreme Court of the Hobbs Act, is the grounds for which the US Government could bring such a criminal case against Williams et al.
On this matter in NFL Football, on which Roger Goodell is executing, either the NFL continues to police its own in forceful fashion or Congress and Washington will weigh in more heavily again as they did back in 1906.
Also the NFL has to move faster on the matter of HGH, but there have been various delays by the NFLPA on implementation of testing for which I am unsure of the merit.
I didn't listen to the audio tape but I'm sure it would sicken me...so I'll take a pass. I'll bet the Saints aren't the only NFL team that has used this type of motivational tool. The only big deal is they got caught. Typical NFL.
This perhaps puts into perspective why a player like Khalif Mitchell turned down a Miami Dolphins contract offer (which included a $97,000 signing bonus) to stay in the CFL.
Mitchell: "If people really see the NFL through the back door, they'd think differently. There's the P.R. version. They have nice commercials and charities. But it didn't feel right and it didn't smell right," he said. "What's the power in the NFL? The money is the power. It's the scare tactic.
"When I was in Minnesota I was standing with my clothes off in nothing but a girdle, and they're taking all these X-rays sizing me up and I thought, 'Is this really the highest echelon of what I want to do?'"
"I'm not saying the NFL is bad. It's a business. They treat you like cattle. People say I'm losing out by coming back to Canada, but it depends on the value you place on money," he said.
Instructing players to go after guys will illegal hits is crossing the line imo.
So the question I’m going to ask now is if the bounty system was only for clean, legal hits would it still be offensive? And if he had said those things and there wasn’t a bounty system would it still be deemed offensive or as offensive? A number of past and present players have said that lots of other teams have had bounty systems so how’s this different?
It still would be unreported compensation and break sms rules IMO. Any money paid by the club or parties of has to be accounted for under the SMS.
It’s the players’ money so why would that count to the cap?