Enough Indignation: Sean Payton, New Orleans Saints Should Have Seen This Coming

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell delivered his own vicious hit on Wednesday, striking the New Orleans Saints with one of the steepest punishments in league history.  In addition to stripping the Saints of two second-round draft picks and levying a $500,000 fine, Goodell suspended defensive coordinator Gregg Williams (now with the St. Louis Rams) indefinitely, head coach Sean Payton for one year and General Manager Mickey Loomis for the first eight games of the coming season.

Too harsh?  Not by a long shot.  However loathsome you find Goodell, he got this one right.

At best, Payton and Loomis looked the other way while Williams incentivized dirty play, and at worst, the Saints principals expressly endorsed the bounty practice.  In either case, player safety took a backseat to winning.

And though the Saints aren’t the first team to sanction bounties, Goodell needed to issue a strong rebuke if his efforts on behalf of player safety were to be taken seriously.

But enough already, this is football, so stop handling these guys with kid gloves and let ‘em play, right?

Maybe not. For as often as NFL Films waxes nostalgically over Dick Butkus de-cleating opponents and Deacon Jones decapitating tailbacks, and Chris Berman longs for the blood-stained jerseys of the “black and blue” division, today’s hits may be too devastating to govern under the old rules.  Sure, there are plenty of former players battling tired joints and frail bodies (see Jim Otto's twenty-eight knee surgeries), but the victims of earlier eras have escaped many of the more frightening injuries threatening contemporaries. 

And while bigger, stronger and faster athletes represent the NFL’s most obvious evolution, new threats to player safety extend beyond impressive gene pools and improved conditioning.

Changes in offensive philosophy have been particularly impactful.  Where defenses once stacked the box to contain run-oriented schemes, today’s pass-happy offenses subject quarterbacks to sophisticated blitz packages and receivers to trolling safeties.

The still-lucid Bart Starr never attempted more than 295 passes in a 14-game season and Kenny Stabler eclipsed the 300 mark only once.  In 1972, Joe Namath started the Pro Bowl having aired it out just 324 times, and in 1975, the Bengals’ Ken Anderson was the NFL’s lone 3,000-yard passer. 

That’s a titanic contrast to the 2011-12 season when every quarterback who started 14 contests surpassed 3,000 yards.  Ten QB’s threw for more than 4,000, and three, including the Saints’ own Drew Brees, topped 5,000.  Average number of pass attempts among those same ten?  572.  Or, to think of it another way, that’s roughly twice as many opportunities for guys like Jared Allen and Richard Seymour to tee-off on the skill positions.

Ironically, improved equipment has contributed to scarier hits too.  Though lighter and more absorbent, today’s armor encourages reckless abandon without mitigating much speed.  And while we, in turn, celebrate these players as “old school,” we ignore the fact that former NFLers policed their play according to what the equipment would support.  Ray Nitschke may have been his era's most feared defender, but he rarely led with his head. 

For those incredulous of the NFL’s interest in player safety, there’s a more inelegant motive behind its severe treatment of the Saints—money.  As players and agents remind us ad nauseum, the NFL is a business, and businesses protect their premium commodities.

Among those targeted by the Saints, Aaron Rodgers, Kurt Warner, and Brett Favre is/were some of the league’s most marketable stars, and stars sell tickets, jerseys, and pump-up ratings.  So unless you’re Vince Lombardi resurrected, league executives aren’t going to take kindly to you putting a price on the head of their biggest draw.  Toss in the cost of rebuffing more than twenty concussion-related lawsuits, as is currently the case, and it’s easy to see why Goodell dropped the proverbial bomb. 

Besides – would anyone have been deterred if Goodell simply issued a fine or seized a draft pick?  The Patriots post-Spygate success offers plenty of evidence that these sorts of “team” penalties aren’t all that crippling. Seize a draft pick from Bill Belichick and he’ll still find a way to win. Take him off the sideline, and winning becomes a thornier prospect.

The fact is, Goodell’s been in enough locker rooms to know the bounty program extended beyond the casual practice Payton and Loomis have suggested, and he’s smart enough to realize that changing the culture sometimes necessitates collateral damage.

The punishment may not fit the crime, and the Saints may be among numerous teams (if not all) who’ve employed similar unsavory methods, but this is less about them than it is about sending a message to all 32 teams.  That’s not great comfort to followers of the fleur-de-lis, but it is the job of the commissioner.

So while Saints fans have responded to Wednesday’s announcement with predictable disdain, the feeling among current and former NFL players has been less unanimous.  Vikings punter Chris Kluwe took to Twitter to applaud the commissioner for sending “the right message,” while the always-diplomatic Warren Sapp did his part to ferret out “the snitch.”  Perhaps the most intriguing tweet came from Brees himself, who sniffed, “I am speechless.  Sean Payton is a great man, coach, and mentor.  The best there is.  I need to hear an explanation for this punishment.”

That’s a curious reaction from a guy who took such a hard line to protect player interests during the last labor negotiation, frequently citing the brevity of NFL careers and susceptibility to injury.  It makes you wonder if Brees has figured out that the “Not For Long” league becomes a great-deal shorter for victims of ill-intentioned head shots and menacing chop blocks. 

But don’t worry about Brees.  After indecorously accusing NFL owners of attempting to capitalize on the leadership vacuum left by Gene Upshaw’s death, he’s leveraging the Saints’ predicament into a lucrative new deal of his own—using fears of his departure to coax a heftier contract offer.   

That's fine, but don't expect any less enlightened self-interest from the commissioner's office.