By now everyone knows about the Bounty scandal that took place in New Orleans this past season. The NFL unveiled a program where players were paid for big hits and even injuring opposing team key players. The aftermath of the scandal left the Saints with a suspended head coach in Sean Payton. It also left them with a defensive coordinator in Greg Williams who was suspended indefinitely by the league.
When a recording was released of Williams talking to his defensive before a playoff game against the 49ers, many were convinced as to his guilt. Quarterback Drew Brees joined NFL AM and offered his own very pointed thoughts about Williams.
“He sounds like a madman,” Brees said, per NFL.com.” He sounds reckless, careless. Even that rhetoric doesn’t belong in the game.”
There’s a lot of things that come out of people’s mouths in the locker room, and on game day and in the heat of the moment. This year, even as I watched games, I heard plenty of stuff — let’s go knock these dudes out, let’s go do this, do that. If you take it for face value and take it out of context, there’d be a lot of fines and suspensions getting thrown out.
“My point is, you’ve got to be able to separate rhetoric from intent. Can you measure intent? Can you say the New Orleans Saints or anybody else went out with the intent to seriously hurt somebody? No, I don’t think you can. You can take an audio tape, you can take a microphone off the field and read into it all you want. But there’s certain things about this game — I don’t know if you’re ever going to eliminate guys talking crazy when they’re all hyped up, ready to go hit somebody.”
Brees has certainly not kept quiet regarding his thoughts on the whole Bounty gate down in New Orleans.
I think it might be best for everyone involved to just move on now, though.