Goodell lowers bounty boom
Saints’ coverup leads to lost draft picks, bans and a $500,000 fine
Meting out unprecedented punishment for a crush-forcash bounty system that targeted key opposing players, the NFL suspended New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton without pay for next season and indefinitely barred the team’s former defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams.
Payton is the first head coach suspended by the league for any reason, accused of trying to cover up a system of extra cash payouts that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell on Wednesday called “particularly unusual and egregious” and “totally unacceptable.”
Sending a message by taking a harsh stand, Goodell also barred Saints general manager Mickey Loomis for the first eight regular-season games next season – believed to be the first time a GM was suspended by the NFL – and assistant coach Joe Vitt for the first six games.
In addition, Goodell fined the Saints $500,000 and took away their second-round draft picks this year and next.
“We are all accountable and responsible for player health and safety and the integrity of the game. We will not tolerate conduct or a culture that undermines those priorities,” said Goodell, whose league faces more than 20 concussion-related lawsuits brought by hundreds of former players. “No one is above the game or the rules that govern it.”
Payton, whose salary this season was to be at least $6 million, ignored instructions from the NFL and Saints ownership to make sure bounties weren’t being paid. The league also chastised him for choosing to “falsely deny that the program existed,” and for trying to “encourage the false denials by instructing assistants to ‘make sure our ducks are in a row.’ ”
In a written statement, the Saints said they are humbled by the support they’ve received from fans and apologized to the NFL, adding the club takes “full responsibility for these serious violations” and there is “no place for bounties” in football.
The Saints must decide who will coach the team in Payton’s place and who will make roster moves while Loomis is out. Two candidates to take over coaching duties are defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and offensive-coordinator Pete Carmichael Jr. Spagnuolo has NFL head coaching experience; Carmichael does not, but has been with the club since 2006. Tebowmania hits Broadway: The New York Jets got the quarterback who turned the Denver Broncos from an alsoran into a playoff team last season and became the NFL’S most talked-about player – for a fourth- and six-round draft pick.
Now Tim Tebow is opening on Broadway.
Eight hours after initially agreeing to a deal, the teams completed the trade that was hung up earlier Wednesday when the Jets apparently balked at repaying Denver more than $5 million for a salary advance due Tebow. ESPN reported the two sides had agreed to split that cost.