Please see the link below, especially the first two pages. Here’s an excerpt, which is exactly what I’ve said over and over since the first quarter of that game. Peter King also used the word I used for the proposed 18-game season–idiotic.
I keep coming back, over and over, to something I first reported Friday evening, something I saw in a confidential four-page memo sent to the 32 teams (and obtained from one of those teams) late Friday, detailing the abuses.
“At times, players both pledged significant amounts and targeted particular players,” the memo said. “For example, prior to a Saints playoff game in January 2010, defensive captain Jonathan Vilma offered $10,000 in cash to any player who knocked Favre out of the game.”
Anyone who thinks the Saints defense didn’t go over the line to try to do just that wasn’t watching the game — and didn’t see the three plays I reviewed over the weekend. Early in the game, Favre handed off to Percy Harvin, and after the handoff — a handoff, mind you, a running play — defensive lineman Bobby McCray ran at Favre and hit him flush in the chin. That brought a 15-yard unnecessary roughness flag from referee Pete Morelli and a fine from the league five days later.
In the third quarter, defensive lineman Anthony Hargrove got 15 yards for pile-driving Favre into the ground after a pass. Four plays later, Morelli missed an egregious high-low hit from McCray and tackle Remi Ayodele; maybe Morelli figured he’d just flagged Hargrove and he couldn’t throw a flag every time Favre got mugged. “I thought my ankle was broken after that play,” Favre told me after the game. “I felt a lot of crunching in there.”
That week, McCray got fined a total of $20,000 for two hits — the hit on Favre’s chin and the hit below his knees after he’d released the pass. Hargrove got $5,000 for slamming Favre to the ground.
There are many reasons Roger Goodell has to act decisively here, but I keep coming back to leader-of-the-pack Vilma speaking up in a team meeting, with, I’m assuming, his teammates already at a fever pitch for the biggest game of their lives, and Vilma throwing $10,000 out there if one of them would knock Favre out. By a concussion from nailing him in the chin after a handoff? Fine. From a bruised kidney after pile-driving him into the ground? Fine. With a torn ACL from diving at his exposed knee and lower leg? Fine. Whatever. Just get him out of the game.