Sorry but whoever is defending Williams or saying that this is a contact sport and we are just spectators who don’t know how it’s done in the trenches — targeting someone’s ACL? Not OK.
Peyton and Williams are smug bitches and deserve everything they get.
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
Sorry but whoever is defending Williams or saying that this is a contact sport and we are just spectators who don’t know how it’s done in the trenches — targeting someone’s ACL? Not OK.[/quote]
Agreed, I’ve played physical sports all my life, still do. Trying to do damage such important areas as head and knees or guys on the sideline has no place in playing tough. It’s for scumbags and is never acceptable.
I happen to have gone to school with Tully Banta-Cain, defensive end for the Patriots, and I still stay in touch with him. I just spoke with him on the phone earlier today and from what he told me, this shit is NOT typical in NFL locker rooms. He says that while there are certainly players and coaches who are out to cause injury, it’s usually kept very low-key because it’s frowned upon.
His point is that while it goes on, it doesn’t go on with every player and players who are vocal about their intent to injure someone are treated like pariahs by most players. The fact is that they know a player like that, one he clearly and vocally is out to injure his opponents, can end up taking out his own players as collateral damage when they retaliate. The example he pointed to was the 1990 NFC Championship (Niners v. Giants). Earlier in the year, Jim Burt, a former Giant and current Niner, made disparaging remarks about Phil Simms and intimated that he was going to injure him. Then he did injure him with a cheap shot and a lot of players felt that the reason Leonard Marshall lit into Montana as hard as he did in the Championship Game is because of Burt’s earlier hit. So while one player may be the one intent to injure, he rarely pays the retaliatory price and his teammates know it.
Tully’s point was that for a coach to vocalize this is classless and it’s not sporting. He made a good point about something else as well. It’s easy for fans and analysts and even former and current players to really hype up the gladiator-like atmosphere about football. But when all is said and done, it’s a game. It’s just a game, even if it’s played for a shitload of money. To take it to the level where you are paying and encouraging players to specifically injure their opponents, ESPECIALLY when it comes to head shots, is absolute bullshit because it fucks with people’s livelihoods AND just their lives in general. Like he said, it’s only the false-bravado chickenshits who like to relive the glory days of their high school or junior college football days that glorify this sort of thing. The players on the receiving end of it certainly don’t, nor do their teammates, spouses and children.
[quote]Phoenix44e wrote:
^ Yeah…I’m not sure either but I have a feeling that a lot of non-athletes are going to have a huge problem with this and a lot of athletes/former athletes aren’t going to find it to be not too big of a deal.
EDIT: Before I get my ass flamed for stating that I didn’t think it was a big deal, let it be known that I did not actually hear the audio part about taking out Crabtree’s acl. And yes regarding that I do agree that that is completely wrong. Personally that alone is banned worthy. You can’t purposely injur players especially targeting areas that could end carrers and handicap them.[/quote]
It’s the athletes and former athletes who actually played at some sort of high level in their sport that are against this. Those are the ones who have played at a high enough level where there really is something on the line other than the first round of drinks and have still operated with respect for their opponents.
It’s the wannabe weekend warriors exorcising the demons brought on by riding the bench for a DII school in Colorado or getting cut from the varsity football team or weren’t good enough after high school or played a year or two of juco ball that are the ones saying this shit is acceptable and part of sports. No athlete would say this is part of sports; only those unfamiliar with real competition would say things like that. Such as LouDog.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]Phoenix44e wrote:
^ Yeah…I’m not sure either but I have a feeling that a lot of non-athletes are going to have a huge problem with this and a lot of athletes/former athletes aren’t going to find it to be not too big of a deal. [/quote]
I disagree. This is a disgrace to sport. Playing hard and tough is 3000 miles away from talking about purposefully injuring someones head and knee in ways that are completely and entirely outside the rules of the sport.
It’s cheating, on top of the million other ethical issues outside of the sporting world.[/quote]
Thanks.
[quote]redstar144 wrote:
[quote]PB Andy wrote:
Sorry but whoever is defending Williams or saying that this is a contact sport and we are just spectators who don’t know how it’s done in the trenches — targeting someone’s ACL? Not OK.[/quote]
Agreed, I’ve played physical sports all my life, still do. Trying to do damage such important areas as head and knees or guys on the sideline has no place in playing tough. It’s for scumbags and is never acceptable.[/quote]
I have to disagree. This is like the Redsox and the beer issue. One team gets caught and everyone throws crap at them like they were the only one that does it. No, they are just the idiots that got caught. I’ve seen bounties from freshman to collegiate in football. Doesn’t surprise me that they have bounties in the pros.
[quote]“They may be better athletes, but not defensive football players that have to go into war tomorrow and play the way we fuckin’ play.”
- Gregg Williams[/quote]
Pic Related.
Im so,so,so Happy I witnessed this game. By itself,it was a very hard fought and exciting game but when you find out what went behind it,then its something to behold.
[quote]QuadasarusFlex wrote:
Im so,so,so Happy I witnessed this game. By itself,it was a very hard fought and exciting game but when you find out what went behind it,then its something to behold.[/quote]
So true. It looked like the only team that listened to Williams was the Niners.
[quote]Aggv wrote:
Peyton and Williams are smug bitches and deserve everything they get. [/quote]
What did you expect from a defensive coach with no college football playing experience and a fucking scab for a head coach?
Purposefully going for potentially career-ending injuries have no place at all in professional sports (or ANY sport for that matter). Football is dangerous enough with out adding that element to it.
In my 20’s (many many moons ago) I played rugby at a high level nationally (and internationally a few times). I can say without reservation that PURPOSEFULLY causing injury and other “cheap shots” is VERY bad karma. Even if you take the “poor sportsmanship” out of the equation. No one on the injured party’s team is going to let that slide. I played at #6 (blind side flanker) for several years before I got big enough to move to the front row, and let me tell you, at that position I spent A LOT of time in the “sin bin”. Mostly retaliating to cheap shots.
Let’s say a loose forward knocked my fly half into next week AFTER he passed the ball… “99 number 8!!” was all it took and I made it my mission to punish that muther fucker until either A) he quit or B) was unable to continue.
Now granted, rugby is a VERY different game than football - you have 30 players on the field and ONE ref… So you can get away with a lot of “self policing”, but I’m sure that it happens. It’s just a bad policy and a slippery slope once started upon.
Now that being said, you can’t take EVERYTHING a coach says to motivate his players seriously. I mean my coach used to tell us to “go out there and take their fucking heads off” or, “knock 'em into next week” or, “go out there and make them cry for their mommies” (my personal favorite cuz he was an Aussie and the way he pronounced “mommies” cracked me up, but I digress). There is LOT’S of “visceral imagery” used to motivate a team when you play contact sports. Did he cross the line? I think he did. But I don’t think he should be banned for life. Levy a fine and get on with the game. All this legal bullshit is, in MY humble opinion, what is responsible for the pussification of America. I mean it’s gotten to the point where ANYONE can take ANYTHING out of context, put it on YouTube and cause someone A LOT of trouble.
Now as far as I know, NONE of the “injury hits” that the Saints dished out were illegal… Just sayin’…
They’re just putting out the product that we as consumers demand. We love this stuff. While Williams is an idiot for knowingly saying all this in front of a documentarian, NO certainly wasn’t/isn’t the only team with such a reward system. Shit happens.
I don’t get why many former athletes think morality is different on and off the field?
This isn’t “let’s go punch’em in the mouth” or “let’s go destroy them” said innocently. If you can’t see how sinister and premeditated, cold, and scientific Gregg Williams is here, you’re an idiot. (Sorry).
Of course there’s a “code of honor” on the field, but it still operates within the overall framework of society. Imagine a football player pulls a gun on the field and goes nuts. He’s getting prosecuted just like anyone else. When a man steps on the field, he assumes the risk of injury as a NATURAL, UNINTENDED occurrence of a phyiscal game.
Adding intention it makes it a completely different story. TO me, this is worse than Belichik’s fetish for taping people. It’s intent to strip people of livelihood, shorten careers. If I were a player injured by the Saints in a demonstrably dirty hit, I’d be pressing charges.
Goodell is not a dumb ass, he sees this possibility and he’s trying to protect the NFL from being liable also for DOING NOTHING.
Why is targeting an ACL morally worse than a head? Hear any of the concussion discussion lately? Roger Goodell is shitting his pants about former players suing the NFL about negligence. That’s a major reason why Goodell is all over it.
Football players should be trying to protect themselves first - out of respect for each other. Don’t ask me. Ask Blake McJunkin
Bad sportsmanship is bad sportsmanship; has nothing to do with “pussification”.
While in no way do I agree with intentionally looking to injure players it would be ignorant to think that this is the only lockeroom where this kind of talk and tactics went on. Bounty issues aside intending to knock another player out of the game by targeting a pre-existing injury is not a new practice. Williams is the only smug prick who would say this kind of rhetoric with a documetary crew there to record the happenstance.
This is why Bill Bellichek is so tight lipped about injury reports…and why I believe it was Joe Gibbs (not sure but I think it was Gibbs) would submit eroneous injury reports, so opposing teams would not target pre-existing injuries.
Joe Gibbs is also being accused of handing out $100 bills if his players knocked out opposing QBs back in the 1980s, so obviously this is nothing new.
It’s the arrogance with which the saints coaches handled themselves, and essentially telling goodell to piss off after being warned.
[quote]altimus wrote:
They’re just putting out the product that we as consumers demand. We love this stuff. While Williams is an idiot for knowingly saying all this in front of a documentarian, NO certainly wasn’t/isn’t the only team with such a reward system. Shit happens.[/quote]
Who’s “we”? Most people on this board and everyone I’ve spoken to thinks Williams is a fucking punk. And I haven’t even bothered to talk to anyone who isn’t a football fan since I try to keep those sorts of people out of my life.
This isn’t good for the game at all and I can’t believe it isn’t more obvious to you and the others who downplay this. You want to know what “shit happens”? What happens is now every kid in high school who’s a star football AND a star baseball or basketball star is now going to think real long and hard about pursuing football rather than the other sport, especially if it’s an offensive player like a QB or a WR.
There’s a finite amount of top-level athletes in this country, and this is pretty much the only one playing football. More and more of these athletes will choose a sport other than the one that carries the explicit possibility that the opposing teams’ coaches are paying their players to fuck you up permanently and end your career. And football will suffer as a result of the loss of this talent. Baseball and basketball will flourish, but football won’t.
So if you want to see all the really gifted athletes in football, the Patrick Willis’, the Cam Newtons, Vicks, Fitzgeralds and Grahams of the game, migrate toward other sports from an earlier and earlier age, then keep on rooting for helmets to pop right off of guys’ shoulders with their heads still in them. Because that’s what you’ll eventually get.
[quote]MattyXL wrote:
While in no way do I agree with intentionally looking to injure players it would be ignorant to think that this is the only lockeroom where this kind of talk and tactics went on. Bounty issues aside intending to knock another player out of the game by targeting a pre-existing injury is not a new practice. Williams is the only smug prick who would say this kind of rhetoric with a documetary crew there to record the happenstance.
This is why Bill Bellichek is so tight lipped about injury reports…and why I believe it was Joe Gibbs (not sure but I think it was Gibbs) would submit eroneous injury reports, so opposing teams would not target pre-existing injuries.
Joe Gibbs is also being accused of handing out $100 bills if his players knocked out opposing QBs back in the 1980s, so obviously this is nothing new.[/quote]
Nobody’s saying that this is an isolated incident at all. Of course this goes on elsewhere. The Niners and the Giants both admitted after the NFC Championship game that they were trying to rough up certain players (Manning, and the Giants admitted to also going after K. Williams because of his concussion history, including one just 3 weeks prior).
The fact that this is NOT an isolated incident is what pisses a lot of people off. It’s not even an isolated incident for the Saints, let alone other teams. Furthermore, you’re forgetting the context in which this has all unfolded. We know much, much more about concussions now than we did even 6 or 7 years ago. Williams isn’t oblivious to any of this. If this had happened, say, 20 years ago, I’d still think it was deplorable, but not to the extent it is now, given the current climate in the NFL.
But Williams was doing this today. He is fully aware of the consequences of the actions he was preaching, and he continued to preach them knowing full well that he was literally paying his players to scramble peoples’ brains AND after he had been warned NOT to do this on several occasions.
Like I said, I don’t think anyone here is naive enough to think that the Saints are the only ones who have ever established a bounty system of this sort. But I also don’t doubt that the Saints were the only who continued to do this, especially with a coach’s explicit encouragement, after the warnings were handed down by Goodell. And I don’t see how anyone could defend any aspect of Williams’ behavior due to the above factors, and certainly not after hearing the audio itself.
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]Phoenix44e wrote:
^ Yeah…I’m not sure either but I have a feeling that a lot of non-athletes are going to have a huge problem with this and a lot of athletes/former athletes aren’t going to find it to be not too big of a deal. [/quote]
I disagree. This is a disgrace to sport. Playing hard and tough is 3000 miles away from talking about purposefully injuring someones head and knee in ways that are completely and entirely outside the rules of the sport.
It’s cheating, on top of the million other ethical issues outside of the sporting world.[/quote]
x2, absolute knob cheese gobbler
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]QuadasarusFlex wrote:
Im so,so,so Happy I witnessed this game. By itself,it was a very hard fought and exciting game but when you find out what went behind it,then its something to behold.[/quote]
So true. It looked like the only team that listened to Williams was the Niners.[/quote]
3rded…