Alleged Bounty Discussion

[formido]

All I take from this is that this is considered legal and that Kam Chancellor should be able to do it all day long without getting fined.

Even more frightening for all the wide receivers that have to play Seattle this year. This is assuming, of course, the NFL treats this type of hit as legal 100% of the time. Show of hands if you think that will happen.

Oh, no. The hit was not legal under the rules. He definitely made contact with the head. I really think the fine was rescinded because it was unavoidable. I have always felt the flag was warranted according to the rule, but it is the rule that I might have an issue with.

At the point Bush pushes off to make the hit his shoulder is at Harvin's chest level. Harvin then bobbles the ball and drops down bringing his helmet down to Bush's shoulder level. At that point there was nothing that Bush could do to avoid it at that point. Watch the gif and you can see this.

Almost all decisions in life are probabilistic and whether you followed the rules is probabilistic. It's not some crazy outcome that Harvin's head very slightly dipped as he tried to catch the ball. This happens all the time. Bush went high and he had a very significant risk of hitting Harvin's head, and he did. The head shot was completely avoidable by going to the midsection, as Seattle defensive players virtually always do. Seattle's defense didn't get a single late hit, roughing the passer or any unnecessary roughness penalty in the play-offs and that wasn't an accident.

It's bizarre that this penalty was rescinded. If this is what Kam's hit on Vernon David had looked like, there is exactly 0 chance it is overturned. I don't know what message the league is trying to send here. Every guy who's penalized in the future should point to this video to defend their case.

 

[Passepartout]

Well the league seems that you hit someone and send them in the hospital or worse. You pay the consequences like Sean Payton did with the Saints! A year without coaching.

 

[rideaducati]

All this is moot. The Saints were warned to stop the performance bonuses, bounties, whatever you want to call them two years before all of this broke. They didn't. They were caught. They served their time.

 

[dontbelikethat]

Didn't really know where else to post this and since it was mentioned in here...

The news that the appeal process resulted in the scuttling of the $21,000 fine imposed on Saints safety Rafael Bush for his postseason hit on Seahawks receiver Percy Harvin has prompted some Saints fans to assume (reasonably) no penalty should have been called on the play.

Which, if accurate, means the Seahawks on the opening drive of the game would have been facing fourth and 11 from the Saints’ 41.

But that’s not necessarily the case. As a source with knowledge of the appeal process explained it to PFT, fines apply only for egregious violations. A violation can still happen, but without rising to the level of something for which the player should be fined.

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... was-wrong/

 

[253hawk]

Now ask those same fans if this was really a penalty or not (I bet they'll say it was, unequivocally.)



What a bunch of whiners.

 

[AsylumGuido]

Now ask those same fans if this was really a penalty or not (I bet they'll say it was, unequivocally.)



What a bunch of whiners.

Who are you calling whiners? The hit by Bush on Harvin was a penalty according to Rule 12, Article 9 (b)(1):

Forcibly hitting the defenseless player’s head or neck area with the helmet, facemask, forearm, or
shoulder, regardless of whether the defensive player also uses his arms to tackle the defenseless
player by encircling or grasping him;

It doesn't matter whether or not it was subject to a fine. And, yes, the hit on Brees was also illegal according to Rule 12, Article 13 (3):

HITS TO PASSER’S HEAD AND USE OF HELMET AND FACEMASK

In covering the passer position, Referees will be particularly alert to fouls in which defenders
impermissibly use the helmet and/or facemask to hit the passer, or use hands, arms, or other parts of
the body to hit the passer forcibly in the head or neck area (see also the other unnecessary-roughness
rules covering these subjects). A defensive player must not use his helmet against a passer who is in
a defenseless posture for example, (a) forcibly hitting the passer’s head or neck area with the helmet
or facemask, regardless of whether the defensive player also uses his arms to tackle the passer by
encircling or grasping him, or (b) lowering the head and making forcible contact with the top/crown or
forehead/”hairline” parts of the helmet against any part of the passer’s body. This rule does not
prohibit incidental contact by the mask or non-crown parts of the helmet in the course of a
conventional tackle on a passer.

 

[253hawk]

Point proven. Even busted out the NFL legalese and the virtual red hi-lighter.

 

[AsylumGuido]

Point proven. Even busted out the NFL legalese and the virtual red hi-lighter.

I'm sorry, but I don't get your point. Can you please explain it?

 

[oasis]

I actually read that Madoff's Ponzi scheme was just hyerbole, along with all hostage death threats. When people say they want to injure or kill you, it's nearly always hyperbolic. The NFL is so stupid to think all those audio clips were serious. All those Saints injuring players? Coincidence. Obviously.

 

[mikeak]

Point proven. Even busted out the NFL legalese and the virtual red hi-lighter.

Next time - read the post instead of focusing on the tools that are there to assist people reading it.....

He kind of took a pretty unbiased correct stand on those two hits. He admitted that the hit on Harvin was illegal and stated that the hit on Brees according to the rules is a penalty.

He is correct even though many will argue the hit on Brees

I would say the hit on Percy should have remained a fine and the hit on Brees should not have been a fine

 

[AsylumGuido]

I actually read that Madoff's Ponzi scheme was just hyerbole, along with all hostage death threats. When people say they want to injure or kill you, it's nearly always hyperbolic. The NFL is so stupid to think all those audio clips were serious. All those Saints injuring players? Coincidence. Obviously.

Glad you brought that up. There were surprisingly few Saints opponents injured during the 2009 season. In fact, the American Enterprise Institute did a study based upon the claims that the Saints were trying to injure opposing players. Here is part of that research as published on July 15, 2012.

We collected data on player injuries for the 2009, 2010 and 2011 football seasons, those in question for the bounty scandal. Each week, teams publicly list a pregame injury report that catalogs every player who might have his performance affected by injury in that weekend's game. Collecting all of those reports provides fairly complete information regarding the timing and severity of player injuries.

With these lists, one can roughly pinpoint when a player was injured by identifying when he is added to an injury report. Though injuries might occur innocently and not technically be "caused" by one's opposition, a team that tends to injure more opponents should stick out in injury reports.

If the Saints tended to injure more players, then teams that played them would tend to list more injuries the following week.To test whether the Saints injured more players than a typical team, one need only compare the number of players added to injury reports after a Saints game to the league-wide average.

Did the New Orleans Saints injure more players?

The data-driven answer is a resounding "no." The Saints appear to have injured far fewer players over the 2009, 2010 and 2011 seasons. The numbers are striking. From 2009 to 2011, the Saints injured, on average, 3.2 opposing players each game. The rest of the teams in the league caused, on average, 3.8 injuries per game. This difference is highly statistically significant, or in other words, it would hold up in a court of law or a fancy academic journal. In each year of the bounty program, the Saints injured fewer players than the average for the league. In 2009, the Saints injured 2.8 players a game, and other teams injured on average 3.8. In 2010, it was 3.5 and 3.6, and in 2011 it was 3.3 and 3.8.

The Saints' behavior on the field was certainly aberrant, but positively so. Only one other team, the San Diego Chargers, injured fewer opponents per game over this entire time frame (3.1 injuries). Of the 32 teams, the Saints injured the third fewest in the 2009 season, the 15th fewest in 2010 and the third fewest in 2011. Might this record be linked to the Saints' being too weak or cowardly to respond to the bounties? Certainly not. Lily-livered players don't win Super Bowls.

However, the bounty system was run by the defense. Perhaps the offense was unusually kind to its opponents, offsetting the statistical misbehavior of the defense. That too is easily disproved with the data. Even if one focuses only on injuries to opposing offensive players, the Saints don't stand out as particularly vicious.

In 2009, the Saints injured far fewer offensive players than did other teams, at 0.9 per game as opposed to an average of 1.9 for other teams. But in 2010 and 2011, the Saints were statistically average, injuring slightly more offensive players in these seasons but no more than chance might allow. Over the three years, the Saints injured fewer offensive players than average.

Okay. How do you explain those numbers? If the Saints were truly trying to injure opposing players how did they manage to injure fewer than 29 other NFL teams during that 2009 season?

Well?

 

[mikeak]

^ They suck at their job?

 

[AsylumGuido]

^ They suck at their job?

They must have. LOL. But, seriously, this is yet another fact that makes Goodell's claims so illogical. If you truly wanted to injure an opponent on a football field it would be fairly easy to accomplish. And people wonder why the players were so livid about these accusations levied against them.

 

[Cartire]

So the success rate of their self-admitted performance pool is your proof?

Just shows that they weren't that good.

 

[AsylumGuido]

So the success rate of their self-admitted performance pool is your proof?

Just shows that they weren't that good.

They were good enough to go 37-11 in the regular season over those three years and injure fewer opposing players over that same period than EVERY NFL team other than the Chargers. There is no way for that to be possible if they spent those three years attempting to intentionally injure opponents. Common sense will tell you that.

There is FAR more proof that they never tried to injure anyone than there is showing that they did. In fact, there is no proof that they did. None. Nada. Zip.

If you can't see this it has to be because you want to believe something different, not because something different is true.

 

[Cartire]

So the success rate of their self-admitted performance pool is your proof?

Just shows that they weren't that good.

They were good enough to go 37-11 in the regular season over those three years and injure fewer opposing players over that same period than EVERY NFL team other than the Chargers. There is no way for that to be possible if they spent those three years attempting to intentionally injure opponents. Common sense will tell you that.

There is FAR more proof that they never tried to injure anyone than there is showing that they did. In fact, there is no proof that they did. None. Nada. Zip.

If you can't see this it has to be because you want to believe something different, not because something's different is true.

You can't say zero, nada, zip when there is the GW tape. Call it hyperbolic all you want. But to completely dismiss that because it doesn't help your case is ignorant.

 

[AsylumGuido]

So the success rate of their self-admitted performance pool is your proof?

Just shows that they weren't that good.

They were good enough to go 37-11 in the regular season over those three years and injure fewer opposing players over that same period than EVERY NFL team other than the Chargers. There is no way for that to be possible if they spent those three years attempting to intentionally injure opponents. Common sense will tell you that.

There is FAR more proof that they never tried to injure anyone than there is showing that they did. In fact, there is no proof that they did. None. Nada. Zip.

If you can't see this it has to be because you want to believe something different, not because something's different is true.

You can't say zero, nada, zip when there is the GW tape. Call it hyperbolic all you want. But to completely dismiss that because it doesn't help your case is ignorant.

The tape doesn't prove anything. If it meant something then why were the players mentioned not injured during the game? Why were none of those players even the recipient of a penalty called on a Saints player? In fact, why were there no penalties called on the Saints that whole game?

There is many tines more evidence that there was never any intent to injure than there is that even vaguely hints at the possibility. Anyone that can openly reason can easily see that.

 

[Cartire]

So the success rate of their self-admitted performance pool is your proof?

Just shows that they weren't that good.

They were good enough to go 37-11 in the regular season over those three years and injure fewer opposing players over that same period than EVERY NFL team other than the Chargers. There is no way for that to be possible if they spent those three years attempting to intentionally injure opponents. Common sense will tell you that.

There is FAR more proof that they never tried to injure anyone than there is showing that they did. In fact, there is no proof that they did. None. Nada. Zip.

If you can't see this it has to be because you want to believe something different, not because something's different is true.

You can't say zero, nada, zip when there is the GW tape. Call it hyperbolic all you want. But to completely dismiss that because it doesn't help your case is ignorant.

The tape doesn't prove anything. If it meant something then why were the players mentioned not injured during the game? Why were none of those players even the recipient of a penalty called on a Saints player? In fact, why were there no penalties called on the Saints that whole game?

There is many tines more evidence that there was never any intent to injure than there is that even vaguely hints at the possibility. Anyone that can openly reason can easily see that.

It's called conspiring. Which many laws we have also have a law against conspiring.

Conspiring to commit fraud. Murder. Treason. Ect.

Just because they didn't succeed at their motive doesn't mean conspiring didn't happen, which according to the tape, is exactly what happened.

And that's just a tape of that games speech. What about the games where they actually hurt someone?

Let me guess. Coincidence in the face of conspiring.

 

[AsylumGuido]

It's called conspiring. Which many laws we have also have a law against conspiring.

Conspiring to commit fraud. Murder. Treason. Ect.

Just because they didn't succeed at their motive doesn't mean conspiring didn't happen, which according to the tape, is exactly what happened.

And that's just a tape of that games speech. What about the games where they actually hurt someone?

Let me guess. Coincidence in the face of conspiring.

That's another point altogether. They rarely injured anyone over that period of time. Did you read the study posted above?

And as for the tape, how do you get conspiring out of that? It takes a long stretch to consider that conspiring.

 

[Cartire]

It's called conspiring. Which many laws we have also have a law against conspiring.

Conspiring to commit fraud. Murder. Treason. Ect.

Just because they didn't succeed at their motive doesn't mean conspiring didn't happen, which according to the tape, is exactly what happened.

And that's just a tape of that games speech. What about the games where they actually hurt someone?

Let me guess. Coincidence in the face of conspiring.

That's another point altogether. They rarely injured anyone over that period of time. Did you read the study posted above?

And as for the tape, how do you get conspiring out of that? It takes a long stretch to consider that conspiring.

All it takes is unbiased eyes.