nfl offseason transactions, fired coaches, general nonsense 2012

my two problems with that are 1) "ability to injure opposing players" is probably not a real skill and probably doesn't have a whole lot to do with a given players overall effectiveness, and 2) in a league where an amazingly high # of players grew up poor and end up broke i think it's crazy to call the financial incentives insignificant.

actually there's a third problem--the league does not benefit from quarterback injuries. far from it. i think defensive play will slowly come around to this fact.

let me be clear: at the end of the day i expect that this probably had minimal impact on the field, during the games. the saints defense kind of sucked for this whole period anyway. but there is some value in doing things (playing, coaching) in good faith and this violates that idea about as much as anything could.

xxp obv

'ability to injure opposing players' is probably not a repeatable skill, true. but football prizes batshit players who are willing to run through walls, as evidenced in that don bosco high school story in the new yorker.

the average nfl salary is $1.9m and the median is $770,000. an extra grand for a headshot to brett favre is not particularly motivating unless you are a guy who has been groomed for this all your life.

i am not trying to portray the players as savages, although that is what their coaches would like to make of them. they are responding rationally to what the league values, which is savagery.

well isn't it another myth that fans/sports media/leagues like to maintain, that the motivation for guys is above all winning/love of the game/teamwork/pure competitiveness but for many it is $$$$$$ first so..

and if you have a guy esp at lower than the median salary looking at an extra $1-$5K tax free, seems like that is motivating all right. responding v rationally to the possibility of making more money while you can in a league where you career could be over the next day. that's not crazy at all.

i think the extra $ pales beside the worry that your teammates will think you're a pussy, so to speak.

even in the military, it is not so much patriotism that drives ppl to heroism as looking out for/being one of the bros.

mooks otm

the line between this kinda incentivized violence and the incentivized violence that is 'just playing football' is very, very thin

the financial incentive is really secondary to the way that this practice of manipulating players to intentionally try to injure other players was not just sanctioned but systematized. also, looking at that warner hit, they clearly crossed the line from taking an opportunity to deliver the biggest hit you can legally - which is lamentably or otherwise pretty standard football practice - and cynically taking someone out away from the ball with the single intent of injuring them. there are shades of violence here and the line between is not "very thin" at all.

The thing about this that bothers me is mostly just the way Gregg Williams is lying about it in his apology. He said: "It was a terrible mistake, and we knew it was wrong while we were doing it ... Instead of getting caught up in it, I should have stopped it. I take full responsibility for my role. I am truly sorry. I have learned a hard lesson and I guarantee that I will never participate in or allow this kind of activity to happen again." But he also did this shit when he was with the Redskins, so how exactly did things get out of control so much that it followed him to his next gig?

looking forward to easterbrook's continued mention of him as 'tastefully named'

I'm withmookie on this, but it is still likely going to change the league

But he also did this shit when he was with the Redskins, so how exactly did things get out of control so much that it followed him to his next gig?

He'll be fired by the Rams within the week and suspended by the NFL for no less than a full season.

i think the extra $ pales beside the worry that your teammates will think you're a pussy, so to speak.

yeah this is true but that concern exists regardless of there being a bounty system?

the line between this kinda incentivized violence and the incentivized violence that is 'just playing football' is very, very thin

i suppose i agree but it's not so thin that ppl should act like it's hard to figure out.

I mean honestly I guess mookie raises some points but at the end of the day it's meaningless. The league cannot and will not and should not tolerate that a bounty system

the financial incentive is really secondary to the way that this practice of manipulating players to intentionally try to injure other players was not just sanctioned but systematized. also, looking at that warner hit, they clearly crossed the line from taking an opportunity to deliver the biggest hit you can legally - which is lamentably or otherwise pretty standard football practice - and cynically taking someone out away from the ball with the single intent of injuring them. there are shades of violence here and the line between is not "very thin" at all.

― Roberto Spiralli, Friday, March 2, 2012 11:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

again, the systemized practice of manipulating players to intentionally try to injure other players = the game of football as it is played today

if we want to seriously get real on this, blame espn, blame replay culture. the league benefits from stuff like this - they love to divide things into 'injuries that we wanted to happen' and 'injuries that we didn't want to happen'. when really they all fall under the same category: 'injuries we were willing to let happen'

I mean we're willing to celebrate violent sacks, willing to celebrate teams that play physical - but only when that sack leads to a disabiling injury does it turn into 'a bad thing'. as long as football is a game that involves delivering the biggest hit you can legally, as long as people celebrate that act, as long as people are getting paid millions of dollars but only when they do exactly that, I find it p hard to blame players for 'crossing the line' and not pretending like the things they do every day do not inevitably lead to disabiling injuries. and that people don't enjoy that.

I mean I don't think financial incentives for injuries are a good thing or should be allowed but I think this whole thing needs to be looked at as a symptom not a cause.

as long as football is a game that involves delivering the biggest hit you can legally

i don't agree that this is equivalent to "intent to injure" at all. it's not really possible to injure other players with legal tackles except by random chance.

the thing about the saints hit on warner and about james harrison's variety of hits is that they were not legal.

again, the systemized practice of manipulating players to intentionally try to injure other players = the game of football as it is played today

yeah i just don't agree with this at all.

Will new Raiders coach Dennis Allen be suspended, I wonder...

Saints will be forced to retroactively forfeit all games in which "hard, open field tackles" were made.

i gotta say that i totally agree with iatee and mookie

heaven forbid players be monetarily rewarded for kill shots! what kind of terrible world are we living in!?

like was it not basically one month ago that everyone was falling all over themselves to praise the niners for knocking out like three saints players? but oh god, make sure dashon goldson doesn't get an extra 10k under the table

yeah i think mookie is basically otm :(

it just seems like a ridiculous place to try and draw a line, especially considering there's no evidence of the saints injuring opponents at a higher rate than anyone else in the league

everyone was falling all over themselves to praise the niners for knocking out like three saints players?

lol everyone was falling all over themselves in praise of this?

ridiculous place to draw the line - gtfo, you do realize that if we all agreed this is "ok" we would be saying that there is no longer such a thing as an illegal hit in football?

lol everyone was falling all over themselves in praise of this?

yes! i mean maybe not on ilnfl specifically, but certainly in the press the niners were being praised for their "legal" helmet to helmet hits

alright but i don't really feel that we need to use the sports media lens to figure out whether or not having a bounty system is ok?

i don't know, i think the uproar is overstated

i'm not saying that a bounty system is okay, but many worse things happen in the nfl

if a study comes out next week that shows beyond a reasonable doubt that opponents were getting injured more vs the saints than other teams, i'd change my mind, but i can't get up in arms over their players getting paid under the table to do what every nfl team wants its players to do

xp i'm sure they do but i find jadedness to be a not-super-great position on this topic. like, saying "wow that is bad, that should be stopped" isn't the same as pulling a full skip bayless.

this is not jadedness, this is being open and honest about what these people are paid to do

they are showing the 07 colts/pats playoff game on nfln

just saw the reche O_O - so classic

love that game. miss u, peyty.

oh no that game

at the time it was the worst loss ever

http://www.bostonsbettah.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Bugeyes.jpg

You can knock the snot out of someone without having to break the rules, whether or not they buy you a steak dinner or an X-box after the game.

I think the thing that is kind of telling is a bunch of these injuries they keep pointing towards (like Dungy with Manning and the whole deal with Favre) there was NO PENALTY called in the game.

^

The hit by the Saints on Warner was completely legal. Even Warner has been saying that the past couple days.

One of my favorite things in all of sports is ex-quarterbacks puffing up and acting tough about taking hits. Almost all of them pretend to hate the enhanced qb safety rules that have been implemented in recent years.

They're jealous. Dudes like Marino would have passed for 10k a season with these rules.

it's also important to note that they all have dementia

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7647468/the-new-orleans-saints-nfl-concussions

could be a little more explicit but: what the Saints will truly be punished for is the unpardonable crime of ripping aside the veil.

We may well be reaching something of a tipping point in our relationship with our true national pastime. Football was always a deal we made with ourselves. We adopted it for its brutality, which was embedded in a context that happened to be perfectly suited to television and to gambling, but which we could convince ourselves was only incidental to our enjoyment because it was only incidental to the game itself. But the players got bigger, and even the unsolicited hits got louder, and the damage to the athletes soon became too obvious to ignore.

My theory on some of this is that the emphasis on protecting the quarterback and getting rid of the contact within 5 yards on WR has in some ways led more to the big bang hit.

A running back going full out is prepared to take a hit and sometimes even gives out more than he gets. In the classic running game, you also used to see more pulls where a lineman or fullback leads the way.

A wide out running some short 5 yard timing pattern to a zone on the field that some safety or linebacker has seen over and over and over in film is just lying in wait to take someone's head off. And the sheer fact that when you go to catch a pass you are not in a position to defend yourself until after you have caught the ball, planted and then start to move forward.

I could also hypothesize that in someways going for the tiny slot reciever (like say Wes Welker) or vice versa going for the huge TE in some pass sets like say Antonio Gates is in someway trying to find a player in those kind of passing games that can either be hard to hit or can take the hit in those situations.

I'm not sure that letting the run come back into the game 'might' fix some of these kinds of issues.

It should also be taken into account that aside from maybe the Favre/Warner playoff bounties (which, should also be mentioned that both those injuries were aggravations of injuries the qbs were already playing with), most of the $$ for these wouldn't offset possible personal foul fines (which the saints got a lot of last season) incurred by a too-vicious hit.
It was kind of interesting last season to watch the conflict between just how cavalier Greg Williams was publicly about how little he cared about all of the personal foul penalties and the saints d's rep as being "dirty" vs. the NFL really starting to get serious about protecting players for once.

tbf, i would've paid five bucks to see those guys laid out myself

ryan fitz shaves swastika into hair to celebrate signing of stevie j:

https://p.twimg.com/AnO0u6xCMAA4_m5.jpg

I'm not surprised because i always saw the saints for the dirty scumbags that they are. Nothing less than forfeiture of the next decade of draft picks and a permanent post-season ban will suffice for punishment.

^^^i've been waiting for that post since this story broke <3

pvmic etc