Salary cap rules exist to prevent more profitable teams from gaining an advantage over less profitable teams by prohibiting them from outspending the competition. In other words, the rules don’t let Jerry Jones, Dan Snyder and others turn their teams into a NFL version of the Yankees.

The rules against bounties have absolutely nothing to do with ensuring financial equality amongst the teams. They are designed to protect player safety.

Unlike the salary cap, the league’s concern with bounty programs is not the financial reward paid to the team’s players. No free agent is going to choose one team over another because of a comparatively nominal amount of cash. Money is simply not the issue.

Instead, the problem the bounty rules are designed to prevent is the creation of an incentive to tackle, block, hit, etc. an opposing player in such a fashion they can’t return. A typical player’s contract is already laden with incentives for tackles and sacks. So it’s not a matter of pay for performance. A bounty program only rewards its participants when they knock a player out of the games. Players are only knocked out of games when they are injured. Thus, the bounty program creates an incentive to injure other players. That’s what the league is trying to prevent.

The laws against robbing a bank are not designed to keep the robbers from getting rich. They were enacted to protect victims from losing their money. The rules Goodell is enforcing against the suspended players are not about any money they might have been paid. It’s about protecting the health of their intended victims.

It’s not even close. The appeal panel punted on making a decision for whatever reason. This is not a salary cap issue. Goodell clearly has the power to again suspend the players. He was correct the first time and will be again when he hands out the next round of discipline.

What I’d like to know is why Goodell has this vendetta going. Did Tom Benson vote against a raise for him or something like that?