Joe Vitt Denies Telling Anthony Hargrove to Lie During NFL Bounty Investigation

Hours after an explosive claim by Saints offensive lineman Anthony Hargrove, the chaos in New Orleans rages on. 

On Monday, Yahoo! Sports uncovered a declaration by Hargrove issued to the NFL that said assistant coach Joe Vitt instructed him to lie about the implementation of the team's bounty program. On Monday night, Vitt vehemently denied those claims.

Vitt, now serving as the interim coach of the Saints while Sean Payton serves out a one-year suspension, told the Times-Picayune's Mike Triplett:

"At no time did I ever tell Anthony Hargrove to lie or deny the existence [of the alleged bounty program]. He can say whatever he wants to say. It just didn't happen."

Though Vitt did admit that the coaching staff's locker-room language needs to change, he told Triplett that he and the rest of the coaching staff never told any members of the team to play with an intent to injure opposing players.

This comes after the release of a haunting tape in which former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams told his players things like, "Kill the head and the body will die," according to the Associated Press.

Vitt also admitted that the team implemented a "pay-for-performance pool for big plays," according to Triplett, something the coach claims is not out of the ordinary in the NFL. He told the Times-Picayune:

"

We had a pot for big plays, the same thing everyone else in the league has—now they call them pay-for-performance. But we never paid for dirty hits. I'll say it again, the exact same thing I told the commissioner, our players never crossed the white lines with an intent to maim or injure. They never threatened the integrity of the game when they crossed the white lines. 

"

How much stock can we put in these claims by Vitt? Absolutely none.

The NFL's investigation has already revealed that players received bonuses for hits that knocked opposing players off the field or out of games. While the coaching staff may not have explicitly said, in these words, "play to injure," their meaning was implicit.

You can't knock a player out of a game or off the field without injuring him.

As the bounty scandal developed, players and analysts have said that every coach talks the way Williams did in the locker room the day that fateful tape was recorded. That intensity, some claim, is part of the game.

Whether or not that's true (and other players and analysts claim it's not), there's a reason the Saints have been heavily fined and penalized. There's a reason the Saints, and not every other team in the NFL, have been targeted.

It's because the Saints took it a step too far. The coaching staff can continue to deny everything it wants, but the damage has been done.

The trust has been lost.