The Saints played to beat their opponents, they played to beat up their opponents. The people screaming that what they did goes too far are wrong, and people like Gerry Callahan need to stop citing injured ex-players as though they prove the game is so savage as to be unsurvivable. The plethora of ex-players who lead good lives indicates otherwise.

It’s called TRUSTING IN THE TOUGHNESS OF THE PLAYERS. Clearly Roger Goodell does not understand these are NOT weak children, they are men.

Such a vague statement because including the word ‘effective’ changes the dynamic of it.

Of course it wasn’t effective, that’s hindsight. What if Loomis clearly instructed them to stop, then Gregg Williams hid it well enough from Loomis’ vigil.

Now the NFL has an inside snitch on this matter, something Loomis clearly wasn’t privy to.

Can we hold off on calling for Loomis’s to be fired until we more details on what he did or didn’t do to stop Gregg Williams.

Based on these non-disputed facts: …
*Gregg Williams was an employee of the Saints.
*Gregg Williams admits that he coordinated the bounty program.
*NFL finds that not only did Williams coordinate the bounty program, but said Saints’ employee also paid into the bounty fund.
*The bounty fund paid players for “knock-outs” or “cart-offs”.
*Players who get knocked out and/or carted off are likely to have their careers adversly affected by the underlying injury as related to the knock-out and/or cart-off.
*Any player/person who knowingly participates in a plot/program designed to reward members for injurious knock-outs and cart-offs, is an intentional participant in adversely affecting another players career.
*Injuries which adversely affect an NFL player’s career, have a great financial impact, not only on that player, but on numerous related business and non-business entities (ex. their families who depend upon them for support, their teams for their specific athletic skilll set, their insurers who pay for their rehabilitation and potential future disability, etc.).

…the Saints and/or the NFL face an increasing set of potentially harmful consequences including:

*Continued escalating lawsuits by former players of their employers for not adequately protecting them, even though the sport has an inherent ‘assumption of the risk’ defense (especially now that those who were injured while a bounty was in effect were victims of an intentional act, for which the ‘assumption of the risk defense’ will not work)
*Lawsuits from the insurance providers who were required to pay the otherwise unnecesary medical expenses incurred due to the injury brought about by the intentional acts of an NFL team’s employee
*Possible IRS investigations and/or criminal charges (stemming from the conspiracy to intentionally cause bodily injury to another)

Conclusion: it is practically a forgone certainty that an NFL team paid it’s players to intentionally injure an opponent, and in some cases, a specific player. To position itself such that they are viewed as not only not condoning such tortious actions, but also that they are the biggest advocate against such actions, the NFL must immediately permanently ban anyone who actively participated in bounty programs in question, and severly punish (minimum 1 year suspensions personally and multi-year highly punitive franchise sanctions) those who were periferally involved.

Going forward, to minimize their own risk/cost of the certainly forthcoming lawsuits, the NFL must make it clear to all “members of the NFL family” (owners, current players, all other league employees – including those of affiliates such as NFLN) that they must not say anything which is harmful or contradictory to the NFL’s top priority of player safety, including especially a bounty program which intentionally seeks to injure their players. And to do so will result in termination for cause.

If a player under Williams wants to make Williams happy, and be much more likely to remain gamefully employed — injure offensive players, especially elite quarterbacks and high value targets.

Other than not retaining Gregg Williams Mr. Loomis did nothing, despite the season being over. D