The halftime tape makes it difficult to believe that Gregg Williams was innocent of cultivating a mindset of injuring opponents. There is no question Williams was of that mindset. The Federal court questioned whether Goodell overstepped his authority and whether the investigation was fair, but there was no ruling or statement that the Saints were innocent.
We were only shown some of the Bounty evidence, and some of the PowerPoint slides were dumb, questionable, or irrelevant. But the word Bounty does appear, money is clearly involved, and "Kill the head" and "cart-off" are highly indicative phrases connected with systematic rewards no matter what tortured logic the NFLPA brought to bear to try and explain them. What the NFLPA claimed those terms meant is just laughable. If "kill the head" means gang-tackle, say gang tackle. If "cart-off" means hard-hit, say hard-hit. Cart-off just flat has no interpretation other than the obvious.
And the league told the Saints to knock it off, whatever they were doing, and the Saints failed to comply and lied about it. They knew the league was concerned about bounties and they gave that no regard. If it were a standard pay for performance but the league thought it was more and your name is Sean Payton, you can avoid all trouble by just shutting it down to alleviate the league's concerns. If I'm forced to choose between Payton being complicit and Payton being a rank idiot, complicit seems right.
The headshot on Percy may have been inadvertent, but the congratulations from the Saints sideline don't exactly indicate that the Williams mentality has entirely left the building. I think jumping to "bounty" is unsupportable, but when a guy is high-fived for taking out the opponent's best weapon with a head-shot, fans are definitely going to re-raise the question of the Saints' culture.
