Quote:
Originally Posted by themedicineman
From page 17 of Tagliabue's release.
This ruling has just made me even more mad about this season than I was before. My hate for goodell is at an all time high and my faith in the league as low as its ever been.
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I read the entire document, and its pretty consistent with what I thought. Williams had a Program. (A pay for incentive program which was common across many teams and took on many forms) The Saints one appeared to be farther reaching than most and included big hits. It was pre-meditated and the message was carefully crafted. Peyton knew about it, and although didn't appear to be aggressively supporting it, he didn't report it as he should, further he appeared to try to hide it.
Although players whooped and hollered in meetings about the Program, there isn't much evidence that infield play was affected. **outside the document but the LA times did a study between 09-11 to find that the Defence was 26th in being involved in injuries on the field.** It is mainly for this reason that all suspensions were lifted. As noted above pay for incentive programs have been found before and the NFL basically would slap a small fine on them. Treating the Saints the way he did was grossly inconsistent.