One former Saint who retired the year before the NFL alleges that Gregg Williams arrives and implemented a bounty program says the whole thing doesn’t surprise him.
Deuce McAllister, the Saints’ all-time leading rusher, told the Shreveport Times that he doesn’t think the Saints’ defense was doing anything from 2009 to 2011 that other NFL teams don’t do.
“It’s something every team does — or did,” McAllister said. “You’re just the team that got caught. It’s unfortunate.”
In the next breath, however, McAllister acknowledged that he never knew of anything like the bounty program that the NFL alleges the Saints implemented.
“I didn’t know to that extent,” McAllister said.
So what does McAllister think every team does? According to McAllister, the pay-for-performance programs that he remember were the type of thing where a running back who fumbled had to put some money in a pot, and that money would be used as a reward.
“Sometimes we might have $500 or $600 in the pot after a game that would pay for a real nice dinner for the six or seven running backs,” McAllister said. “Or after some games we might donate the money in the pot to our manager who was assigned to take care of the running backs, Corey Gaudet.”
What McAllister is describing may, indeed, be something every team does. But what McAllister is describing is a far cry from what the NFL alleges the Saints did.