The NFL has found themselves in a bit of a pickle. It looks like current St Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams ran his own little mercenary business at every stop of his NFL career. A career that could be ending soon. From Tennessee to Buffalo to Washington to New Orleans. Each stop had a bounty system to take out opposing players. Jacksonville has yet to check in but he was there for only one year. He probably didn't have the time. He was the head coach in Buffalo so imagine the havoc he could have caused there. Fortunately he couldn't achieve the on field success to keep his job and his little games. Initially, I saw this mess as solely a problem for the Saints. Clearly the Saints are in some trouble. General manager Mickey Loomis lied. Head coach Sean Payton ignored it all. The Saints players went after opponents with the intent to injure. Despite all that the main problem child is Williams. At first I felt that any punishment of him would be unfair punishment of the Rams. Now, I believe that Gregg Williams has coached his last game in the NFL. The Rams just have to deal with it. The NFL should have seen this coming and they should have dealt with it long ago.
When I was a football tadpole learning about the game in the 1970s the Oakland Raiders were pulling similar stunts with malicious intent. They had a defensive backfield filled with fools playing a nasty game. Jack Tatum, George Atkinson and Skip Thomas earned points for on field mayhem. If one of these clowns knocked out an opponent, they earned a point. If the injured player was carted off the field, they earned even more points. Who knows what the winner earned? Maybe it was a beer at the end of the season. The equivalent of a $100 bounty to the well compensated player of today. The meager rewards were nothing compared to the respect and praise when one of these idiots ended the career of one of their peers. On August 12, 1978, Jack Tatum hit New England Patriots receiver Darryl Stingley in an exhibition game. Stingley never walked again. When he passed away in 2007 at the age of 55, Stingley had spent the majority of his shortened life in a wheel chair. I wonder if Tatum won the game in 1978. As a child, I was stunned by this ludricrous game that the Raiders defensive backs played. No one else seemed to care. The league had to know of this game. If I did, they did. I find it kind of sad that the players that have to do this are usually marginal players at best. The only way that they can survive in the league is by playing the game more brutally than the rest. They don't have the football skills to otherwise survive in the NFL. Raiders cornerback Willie Brown didn't need play this injury game. Neither did Mike Haynes. They could play tough football without the need to intentionally injure another player. Unfortunately, injuries are a part of football but when injuring a player becomes the objective there's obviously a serious problem. Injuries were the objective of the idiots in the Raiders secondary. It was the objective of the players coached by Gregg Williams. From the nasty play of George Trafton in the '20s to the brutal ballistics of Hardy Brown and clothes line tackles of Night Train Lane in the '50s, players have played a violent game. That violence is the appeal to many. The Raiders defensive backs crossed a line in the '70s. Gregg Williams has crossed it again. The NFL can't ignore it this time.
The most important thing to any organized sport is the integrity of the games. The observer, the fan has to be able to trust what takes place on the field. Usually this involves gambling. This bounty business also threatens the integrity of the game. When the Saints' Jonathan Vilma throws down $10,000 for the player that takes Brett Favre out of a game the integrity of that game is threatened. The real objective of each play becomes questionable. The NFL could have dealt with this sort of thing forty years ago when some of the Raiders played their stupid little game within a game.
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