Gregg Williams and New Orleans Saints' Brand of Football Shouldn't Be Acceptable

If the New Orleans Saints and Gregg Williams were coaching an acceptable form of football, count me out. I'll hand in my resignation letter today and move on to something a little less atrocious, like working for the North Korean government.

Seriously, people, this isn't "your daddy's football" and this isn't "old school." This is damnable. Williams and the Saints advocated a level of violence that has never been OK and should never be allowed.

Don't believe me? Listen to Williams himself.

In January 2012, while the Saints were already under a cloud of suspicion having been warned by the NFL league office about bounties, Williams gave this speech.

Mind you, Williams knew he was being taped and he knew he was being watched closely by league officials. Somehow, Williams didn't realize (or didn't care) that this was wrong.

Williams' theme for much of his speech (much of his career, in fact) is, "Kill the head and the body will die." Figuratively, that statement isn't so bad. Rattle a quarterback and his team will be shaken—it's common sense. Take out the stars and the role players can't fill their roles. That's football.

But when Williams uses that same theme to talk about Kyle Williams' history of concussions, the listener realizes that this isn't just football.

As I've said and written before, the NFL's natural violence doesn't naturally extend to intent to injure.

Some NFL fans (and some NFL players and media) don't get this. Former NFL offensive lineman Ross Tucker tweeted: "Unless you've been in the NFL, you have no context/frame of reference for the Gregg Williams audio."

Just because something happens doesn't make it right.

Call it the "wussification of America" if you want, but my generation learned these lessons at an early age. Karate may be a combat sport, but Daniel San did things the right way—the Cobra Kai didn't. Ivan Drago's famous Rocky IV line, "If he dies...he dies," isn't held up as the paradigm of athletic virtue.

There's a line in violent sports that wanting to "knock the player out" is just talk right up until everyone realizes one guy really is taking head shots every chance he gets. Then it's more than just talk, and the talk doesn't excuse the action.

In this post-Bountygate landscape, we know Williams' motives, so this can't be just talk. We don't have to quibble about what the gesture he made means—Williams was offering to pay for hits just like every other big game he'd coached in.

We don't have to wonder what Williams could have meant, as he talks about taking out Kyle Williams' head or Michael Crabtree's ACL.

This isn't just boys being boys; this is men being (insert Gregg Williams-style vulgarity here).

Never mind the fact that this doesn't happen everywhere, as some would claim. Never mind the fact that Williams, when all is said and done, rarely had a better defense than his opponents. Never mind the fact that it was the San Francisco 49ers that laid out Saints in this game. 

The only fact you need in this public court of opinion is motive. We know the motive of Williams and the Saints. We know that those motives were public knowledge to head coach Sean Payton and general manager Mickey Loomis. We know Williams' penchant for injuries extended to players like linebacker Jonathan Vilma.

Injuries are part of the game of football, but they never had to be the goal.

This brand of football shouldn't be acceptable in the game I know and love. This shouldn't be acceptable anywhere in society. This isn't political correctness, and this isn't the NFL going soft—this is black and white, right and wrong, and beyond the pale.

Normal football is to what the Saints were doing as normal hockey is to what Todd Bertuzzi did when he sucker-punched Steve Moore in 2004. That hit was never considered "part of the game of hockey," and left Bertuzzi open for civil and legal action.

Hockey being a violent place never made what Bertuzzi intentionally did OK. He was out to injure Moore and take him out of the game. He wasn't trying to send a message—he was trying to send a player to the emergency room.

There's a line in violent sports between controlled chaos and assault. On the field and from the stands, it's a line that gets blurred in every contest. That's a part of the sport that everyone realizes, most accept and some revel in.

Keeping this line visible, however blurred, is why penalties are handed out and why fights are stopped. Ignoring the line or pretending it doesn't exist is why Williams, Payton, Loomis and the Saints are in the trouble they're in.

When the motive is clear and the motive is criminal, we cannot accept such a despicable and systematic erosion of the game as just part of the game.

When our culture accepts the worst possible iteration of the NFL as the paradigm of what the NFL should be, it's time to give up as both a sport and a culture. The game of football isn't what Williams preaches and what Saints fans want us to believe.

That game, the game Williams coaches, isn't fit for our Sunday viewing, and it isn't fit for our children to grow up emulating and playing. Williams' motives strip the game of its valor and make it something less than human.

The game of football can be better than this and has always been better than this. If fans refuse to accept this lesser brand of football, the game will always be better than this.

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Michael Schottey is an NFL Associate Editor for Bleacher Report and an award-winning member of the Pro Football Writers of America. He has professionally covered both the Minnesota Vikings and the Detroit Lions, as well as NFL events like the scouting combine and the Senior Bowl.