By Pete Lieber
I have a framed, autographed picture of Philadelphia Eagles two-way legend Chuck Bednarik standing over a prone and unconscious Frank Gifford after levying a terrifying hit in a 1960 game between the Eagles and the New York Giants at Yankee Stadium.
The photograph, signed 50 years after the hit, says, "Sorry Frank!" above the signature.
The hit sidelined Gifford for the remainder of the '60 season, as well as the '61 season.
It was a completely legal hit, even by the current stringently protective rules of the National Football League, and the level of sarcasm dripping from Concrete Charlie's Sharpie as he inked the glossy black and white photo was palpable.
The New Orleans Saints will face a maelstrom of punishment handed down by Commissioner Roger Goodell for the "bounty program" former defensive coordinator Greg Williams orchestrated, coming to a head in their Super Bowl season of '09.
As many as 27 players have been implicated. Head coach Sean Peyton and general manager Mickey Loomis allegedly withheld the full story during the NFL's investigation.
The program, funded by the players, offered reward incentives for knocking certain players out of games, hits that caused a player to be carted off the field, and other defensive "big plays" such as forced fumbles and interceptions.Make no mistake about it; the Saints will be made an example of because when your mantra as a commissioner is to "protect the shield" of the NFL, a blatant disregard for its rules and subsequent quasi cover-up of the infractions is not going to sit well.
In addition, shunning the NFL manual in a way that contradicts an entire movement in player safety when concussions and their ramifications are now critically examined and when players with post-concussion syndromes are taking their own lives post-career, requisites a decisive and swift response.
Much in the mold of the program in question, individual punishments in this case should be strictly monetary. Too many of these defendants have moved on to other teams in the NFL, including Williams, now with the Washington Redskins.
Are the teams who have these players under contract supposed to suffer for the sins of another organization?
I'd be hard pressed to find a player who did not participate, at least in acknowledgement, in Williams' bounty program if they were under his command. When team leaders like linebacker Jonathan Vilma and safety Roman Harper are putting up money in fiery speeches and calling out their teammates to follow through on taking someone out in an NFL locker room, you don't raise your hand meekly to belie the notion that the defense needs any further incentive to get a job done.
You grunt in affirmation.
You let loose expletives.
You say things that can't be printed in any Yahoo! Sports article because you don't shake an NFL locker room tree.
It would be a poor assumption to say that similar activities take place in almost every NFL locker room, but rest assured, in some form or fashion, if you carry a football in the NFL, you are a target.
In a game ever moving toward turning into a colossal hypocrisy, football relies on its violence to make it a $9 billion enterprise while preaching safety from a lofty pulpit.
In no version of any definition of American football is the word safe remotely intimated.
As time continues its relentless surge forward, the players become bigger, stronger, faster—with or without the aid of PEDs or the local GNC.
It's evolution.
The impact at the line of scrimmage alone is like a 30 mile per hour car wreck. Those can hurt. Now, imagine getting in 75 in one day.
The NFL is a league where nothing is guaranteed. You don't perform, you'll find yourself jobless. The risk of injury on every play is real, and players are going to do whatever they can and have to do to make the most out of their time in the league.
If they have to get a little dirty to achieve a greater success or buy more time in the league or prove themselves worthy of their next contract, to a man, they'll go that extra mile.
What the New Orleans Saints did in their locker room smears color on what anyone who understands the game will tell you is black and white already.
Any defensive player with a clear line to a quarterback is trying to destroy him.
Yes, the goal is to get them to the turf or rip the ball free, but the method to reach that goal lies in destruction.
When a player is showered and dressed in their Armani and waxing philosophically to the cameras after a game, they'll tell you they extend hope for good health and happiness to most opponents once the final whistle blows.
But while they're on the gridiron, a defensive player's primordial mission is to seek and destroy.
If I'm playing Brett Favre in the NFC title game in 2009 and know that Tavaris Jackson is his backup, I'm aiming to hit him so hard that he wakes up tomorrow. I might even make a phone call to make sure he's alright if I succeed in doing the damage.
I wouldn't need any extra incentive.
By taking Favre out, I would have just increased my team's chances of winning and going to the Super Bowl ten-fold. I would have contributed to a conference championship and garnered the worship of my fan base. I will have earned my salary and gone a long way toward answering endorsement phone calls and locking up another contract down the line.
Sure, it would be sweeter to earn that merit by beating Favre for four quarters, but the NFL is a fast moving locomotive and the end game is a ring, by whatever means within the rules necessary.
The Saints failed in needing to take an understood defensive notion out of the abstract and monetizing it. They went over the line in adding the little bonus for a player being carted off the field.
What the Saints did is an NFL reality.
Their execution of it was rather childless and more importantly, stupid.
The fact that Greg Williams kept documentation of the bounty program is ludicrous. The fact that their defense needed a $1,500 incentive to try and knock a player out at the risk of paying 20 times that in fines for any sort of illegal hit just doesn't make much sense.
But there's the rub, nowhere does it say anything about taking Kurt Warner's knees out, or lowering a helmet into Brett Favre's head. It was an immature method of telling your players to hit people as hard as you possibly can. That's the game, isn't it?
While they've got a ball carrier in their crosshairs, the mentality of every defensive player in the NFL is to inflict damage. That's what we pay for as fans.
That's football.
Chuck Bednarik played that way 50 years ago. No one needed to offer him any extra incentive. I dare you to ask him today to apologize for it.
SOURCE:
Yahoosports.com
washingtonpost.com
