MMQB preamble, Homage to the Opening of High School Football Season:
Louisiana State Police investigating wiretapping allegations against the New Orleans Saints football team said Monday they found no evidence any state laws were broken.
New Orleans Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma is asking a federal court for a hearing this week over the football player's yearlong suspension stemming from the "bounty" investigation: allegations of financial bonuses being paid to hurt opposing players.
NEW YORK -- As Mary Jo White, the former federal prosecutor who examined the evidence for the National Football League in its pay-for-performance/bounty case against the New Orleans Saints, went through reams of evidence Monday afternoon for 12 reporters in league offices, I had one overriding thought: All of this cannot be invented.
At the very least, Junior Seau's shocking suicide this week raises the stakes all the more when it comes to what might be on the line in the controversial and much-debated effort to increase player safety in the NFL. We don't know for sure yet if the league's two biggest headlines in recent days were connected on any level, and if Seau's long and distinguished football career led to the kind of brain injury that contributed to him taking his own life, but there is ample reason -- and far too much recent history -- to support suspicion on that front.
Two months to the day after this bombshell of a story first exploded across the NFL, the final shoe finally dropped Wednesday in the Saints bounty scandal. And predictably, it landed with another loud, reverberating thud.
Saints bounty scandal 77, Patriots Spygate scandal 0.
Four past or present New Orleans Saints players were suspended Wednesday by the National Football League for their roles in the "bountygate" scandal involving bonuses for trying to hurt opponents.
The general manager for the New Orleans Saints said Thursday he has never listened in on an opposing team's communications, or asked to have the capability.
updated: Thu Apr 26 2012 19:09:00
CBSSports.com's Larry Holder on a report that New Orleans Saints GM Mickey Loomis listened in on opposing teams.
The Louisiana State Police said Tuesday that they have joined the FBI in investigating allegations that New Orleans Saints General Manager Mickey Loomis had the ability to eavesdrop on opposing coaches for nearly three seasons.
One of Mickey Loomis' best friends, Cortez Kennedy, was sitting in a model's chair in Alpine, Utah, of all places, Monday afternoon, while a sculptor worked on his Pro Football Hall of Fame bust. The session lasted for four hours, and Kennedy kept busy by scanning the web and reading ... and then he saw the report that Loomis was being investigated for wiretapping the visiting coaches' booth at the Superdome from 2002 through 2004. Immediately he texted Loomis.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we digest the NFL's just-released 256-game regular-season schedule ...
It's looking more and more as though the Saints will fill their interim head coaching job from within -- and not with a big-name coach like Bill Parcells.
News item: Indianapolis owner Jimmy Irsay says the Colts wanted to work out quarterback Robert Griffin III and were denied by the quarterback's agent.
Two headlines of the morning. Can't figure out which I like more, so I'll give you both.
It's obvious the Saints will greatly miss the on-field leadership and offensive creativity of Sean Payton during his suspension for the bounty scandal that has enveloped his team over the last month. After all, we're talking about a Super Bowl-winning coach who has led his team to the playoffs in four of his six seasons at the helm.
Barring an appeal, coach Sean Payton will walk out of the Saints facility sometime Saturday and begin an 11-month suspension for his complicity in a bounty system that existed for three years in New Orleans under former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams.
PALM BEACH, Fla. -- His one-year league suspension has yet to even start, he continues to mull over his appeal options, and it's still far from clear as to who will replace him this season in New Orleans on an interim basis. But in reality, Sean Payton began focusing on the rest of his NFL head coaching career here Tuesday morning, taking a first fledgling step in the attempt to restore a reputation that has been badly damaged by the Saints bounty scandal.
PALM BEACH, Fla. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight from the first full day of the NFL's annual meetings at that bastion of old money, The Breakers hotel...
PALM BEACH, Fla. -- At the NFL meetings every year, there's a Monday night reception with a band (Adele seemed to be the flavor of the evening last night) and most of the coaches, owners, GMs, league people and media mixing it up. At this little soiree, I got one question about 18 times: "You think Bill Parcells would come back?''
PALM BEACH, Fla. -- New Orleans coach Sean Payton arrives at the NFL owners meetings this morning, with only seven days left in his 2012 season. Starting next Monday, Payton will begin his year-long suspension for looking the other way and, commissioner Roger Goodell ruled last week, tacitly approving the out-of-bounds bounty scandal and then misleading the league about it.
After bringing the hammer down hard on the coaches, administration and future of the New Orleans Saints Wednesday, National Football League commissioner Roger Goodell clearly has one major job remaining in his discipline of those involved in the Saints bounty scandal: the players.
Born in the same year as the NFL's ultimate game, the New Orleans Saints waited more than four decades to reach the Super Bowl and play on football's grandest stage. And when those then-inspirational 2009 Saints won their showdown against Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts in South Florida, they reveled in and celebrated their victory like no team and its long-suffering fan base had ever done before.
In sweeping discipline that one analyst called "historic," New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton was suspended without pay for the entire 2012 season and former Saints defensive coach Gregg Williams was suspended indefinitely in a series of NFL punishments Wednesday for the team's bounty program targeting opponents.
SI.com reached out to Jeff Diamond, the former VP/GM of the Minnesota Vikings, former president of the Tennessee Titans and current SI.com contributor, for his reaction to the penalties doled out by the NFL to the New Orleans Saints for the bounty program they ran from 2009 to 2011.
While the NFL's busy free-agent signing period and Peyton Manning's Magical Mystery Tour continue to dominate the headlines this week, still looming in the background is the pending outcome of the Saints' bounty scandal. League commissioner Roger Goodell has yet to mete out disciplinary measures to the coaches, players and team front-office executive identified two weeks ago as being either aware of or directly involved in the illegal pay-for-performance program that New Orleans operated from 2009-2011.
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees wrote a letter to fans, saying he was never aware of the infamous bounty program that his team admitted to taking part in.
The New Orleans Saints admitted Tuesday to paying bonuses for hits that would knock opposing players out of a game, vowing the practice won't be repeated.
When Vikings coach Brad Childress returned to Minneapolis after the NFC Championship loss two-plus years ago, he got a tape together of eight hits on quarterback Brett Favre that were not flagged for penalties in the game. He was, I am told, very upset about what he saw as the excessive brutality in the game that left Favre bruised and hobbled afterward, and he wanted the league to look into the hits.
The National Football League on Friday found the New Orleans Saints guilty of a wide-ranging system of bounty payments to between 22 and 27 defensive players from 2009 through 2011, and player-safety-conscious commissioner Roger Goodell could bring the hammer down very hard on the franchise.
The New Orleans Saints and their players, coaches and front office personnel are likely to receive harsh sanctions from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for the dangerous bounty system they employed over the last few seasons. Lengthy suspensions, hefty fines and forfeiture of draft picks are all on the table. Their real worries, however, may come in court rooms, as the bounty system arguably broke the law. SI.com legal analyst Michael McCann breaks down the potential legal fallout.
There's plenty of blame to assign to plenty of figures involved in the Saints' embarrassing bounty scandal, and in due time an assortment of folks will end up paying in some way or another for their misdeeds.
Much of my reporting on the burgeoning bounty scandal with the New Orleans Saints is contained in a story written for Sports Illustrated this week. Please watch my Twitter account, @SI_PeterKing, on Tuesday for a link to it. And, of course, look for it in the magazine this week.
The NFL will investigate any information that sheds light on whether other teams might have had a bounty program similar to the one the Saints ran the past three seasons, but sources say the potential broadening of the league's inquiry will not soften the focus on New Orleans or any forthcoming disciplinary measures headed its way.
The Saints' bounty scandal is a saga with multiple moving parts and tentacles that reach in many directions across the NFL landscape. New Orleans might represent ground zero in the story, but the impact of the Saints' pay-for-pain affair will reverberate throughout the league, with some of the principle figures involved now with other organizations and other teams being drawn into the investigation by virtue of their past links to former New Orleans defensive coordinator and bounty pool organizer Gregg Williams.
The far-reaching investigation into a "bounty" scandal is reverberating across the National Football League and threatens to tarnish the loveable image of the New Orleans Saints franchise.
updated: Mon Mar 05 2012 21:20:00
One of Gregg Williams' former players says "bounty" hits cross the line but he doesn't believe Williams is a dirty coach.
The New Orleans Saints' defense had a bounty program that paid players for injuring opponents and for making interceptions and fumble recoveries, the National Football League said Friday.
updated: Mon Mar 05 2012 21:08:00
An investigation is under way after the NFL's announcement that the Saints paid players for injuring opponents.
Our impulse at this time every year is to expend copious amounts of energy trying to figure out how all the blanks get filled in over the next few months, from the constant info-gathering and guesswork that surrounds the unfolding of the NFL Draft (mockers unite!) to the 200-piece jigsaw puzzle that is the league's looming free agency signing season (start with spicy rumors, add a judicious visit or two, then bake until you have a solid agreement in principle, and at last, serve up a delicious done deal).
Some losses are so bad that when you get home, your dog kicks you.
SAN FRANCISCO -- He could have left town and never looked back last offseason, but Alex Smith stayed home and stayed with it. He resolved to remain a 49er, and give it one last shot.
Grading out the performances from San Francisco's thrilling 36-32 win over New Orleans Saturday afternoon in NFC divisional playoff action.
1. This is football's version of the Irresistible Force meeting the Immovable Object.
This journey started in the dog days of summer in New Orleans.
DENVER -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we digest a wild-card weekend in the NFL that obviously saved the best for last, Denver's stunning Tebow-led overtime upset of Pittsburgh at a delirious Sports Authority Field...
NEW ORLEANS -- For two quarters Saturday night the Lions played about as well as they could on defense. They limited the high-scoring Saints to one touchdown, forced two turnovers and made the pocket uncomfortable for quarterback Drew Brees, whose longest completion was 23 yards.
Grading out the performances from New Orleans' 45-28 win over Detroit Saturday night in NFC Wild-Card action.
1. These teams played five weeks ago in New Orleans, with the Saints prevailing 31-17, but the Lions were shorthanded.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we break down the NFL's 12-team playoff field from as many angles as occur to us...
NEW ORLEANS -- On a night when he stood taller than any other NFL quarterback ever, at least in one very historic sense, it's ironic that Drew Brees couldn't see much of the record-breaking feat he had just wrought.
Summing up the drama with 17 games left in the NFL season:
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight in a Week 14 that had more than its share of frantic finishes, like the ones that unfolded in Washington, Tennessee, Cincinnati and Detroit...
NEW ORLEANS -- Things we learned watching the Saints' 49-24 destruction of the downward-bound Giants at the Superdome on Monday night.....
The end for coach Jack Del Rio came sooner than Jacksonville owner Wayne Weaver had hoped. The owner, one of the most patient of his ilk in the NFL, had planned to make a decision on Del Rio's future at the end of the season. But the Jags had played so haplessly on offense, and Del Rio couldn't turn the ship around in any tangible way, and there was just no hope in a town that goes week-to-week to sell tickets. So Weaver fired Del Rio today in the midst of his fourth straight non-winning season -- on a day when it was also revealed that Shahid Kahn will buy the franchise and keep it in Jacksonville.
New York Giants (6-4) at New Orleans Saints (7-3)
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight on a second consecutive NFL Sunday ruled by the road teams....
New Orleans Saints (6-3) at Atlanta Falcons (5-3)
With Week 9 finished and 130 of the NFL's 256-game regular season now in the books, we're almost exactly halfway through the story in 2011. The second half of the season shapes up as an intriguing and wide-open affair, with 20 of the league's 32 teams still playing .500-or-better ball, and 18 clubs either in first place or within two games of the lead in their division.
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we take in a Week 9 in the NFL that was pretty friendly to road teams, with eight of them -- the Jets, Dolphins, Falcons, 49ers, Bengals, Broncos, Giants, and Packers -- winning ...
PITTSBURGH -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight in a Week 8 that started out looking like Upset Sunday, but then settled down considerably as the games wore on....
Detroit 24, Chicago 13: I don't remember seeing a game that featured the rising-star aspects of one team and exposed the faults of another so decisively.
What a strange game Monday night. How does a team win a game against an unbeaten foe when the team scores no touchdowns, fumbles six times and relies on a neophyte kicker who shanked a 21-yard field goal attempt a couple of weeks earlier? That's why they play the games, I guess. Dan Bailey's six field goals beat Washington 18-16.
ColdHardFootballFacts.com breaks down Sunday's Houston at New Orleans game (1 p.m., CBS).
GREEN BAY -- "Do we play some of the most dramatic games in NFL history?!'' Greg Jennings said to me on Lambeau Field Thursday night, still short of breath from the end of Packers 42, Saints 34. I should think so. Let's try to make sense of the 10th Thursday night opener, the best one since the league went to the new concept in 2002:
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Dispatches from the Packers' wildly entertaining 42-34 win over the outgunned Saints in Thursday night's NFL regular-season opener at a celebratory Lambeau Field. (Lockout? What lockout?) ...
The Green Bay Packers host the New Orleans Saints Thursday night in a star-studded NFL kickoff game that pits the last two Super Bowl champions.
SI.com is previewing all eight divisions throughout the week in anticipation of the 2011 season kicking off. (Send comments to siwriters@simail.com)
Musings, observations and the occasional insight as we run down the winners and losers in the all-important (OK, more important?) Week 3 of the NFL's preseason. The games don't count, but the perceptions sure do ...
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on training camps across the country. For an archive of all camp postcards, click here.
NEW ORLEANS -- March 11 has become a sort of defining point in the labor mess between NFL owners and players. That was the day the Players Association, after two years of failing to make progress toward a new collective bargaining agreement, decertified as a union and filed an antitrust lawsuit against the league. The owners responded by closing their doors and locking out the players, ostensibly suspending on-field business until a deal is reached.
SEATTLE -- There are numerous ways to describe Matt Hasselbeck's performance in the Seahawks' 41-36 wild-card upset victory over the Saints on Saturday. However, none is better than coach Pete Carroll's summation:
Quick-hitting insight on today's 1 p.m. games ...
With the NFL's postseason tournament beginning in just one week and a full 10 games figuring in on playoff berths or positioning, consider Week 17 the mad scramble before the madness.
Things we learned from watching the Saints' riveting defeat of the Falcons in the Georgia Dome Monday night ...
I must be crazy to be part of 13 real fantasy leagues this fall. That's 13 leagues of last-minute lineup changes in September, 13 leagues of stressful wheeling-and-dealing before the November trade deadlines and 13 leagues of agonizing over RB/WR-flex options during the playoff weeks of December.
What makes a man a real man? The short answer is short sleeves, to judge by Monday night's Jets-Patriots game, in which most of the players left their arms exposed to the 17-degree windchill, even though some -- like quarterbacks Tom Brady and Mark Sanchez -- concealed balaclavas beneath their helmets.
Quick-hitting insight from today's 1 p.m. games ...
For not only leading the New Orleans Saints to the first Super Bowl title in the franchise's history, but also for helping lead the city of New Orleans' rebirth after the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, quarterback Drew Brees is the recipient of Sports Illustrated's 57th Sportsman of the Year award. Brees will be honored at a ceremony Tuesday evening in New York City.
NEW ORLEANS -- There was ample noise in this city on Sunday night and deep into Monday morning, because it was Halloween and that is something like a junior varsity Mardi Gras around here. There was music spilling out of the storefronts of every bar on Bourbon Street and the giddy thrum of a thousand vaguely drunken conversations, every voice trying to make itself heard over all the others until none are heard at all -- and it's just a seismic blur. It's like this most nights here, but louder on some than others, and in particular when it seems like half the city is in costume.
Throughout the 2010 NFL season, SI.com's Nick Zaccardi will work with Jerome Bettis to get the six-time Pro Bowl running back's observations about the latest happenings in the league. Bettis retired from the NFL in 2006 after a 13-year career.
On a Sunday full of big hits, the one DeSean Jackson took might have been the biggest. The Eagles wide receiver -- who returned to his 2009 form with two long touchdowns in the first quarter -- took a hit from Dunta Robinson Sunday that left both players with concussions.
Sean Payton, his Super Bowl champs on the verge of a crisis of confidence this week, channeled his inner Parcells. I covered the Bill Parcells Giants for four years in the '80s, and I remember thinking how odd it was to be around the team after a big win and see Parcells growling and unhappy about all the little things they were doing wrong; or sometimes when the team was in a tailspin, he'd be Dale Carnegie, convincing them they were on the cusp of something great if they'd only clean up this or that.
Throughout the 2010 NFL season, SI.com's Nick Zaccardi will work with Jerome Bettis to get the six-time Pro Bowl running back's observations about the latest happenings in the league. Bettis retired from the NFL in 2006 after a 13-year career.
The injury bug whipped around the NFL in Week 3 as if it were contagious.
The injury bug whipped around the NFL in Week 3 as if it were contagious.
KANSAS CITY -- Musings, observations and the occasional insight from a Week 3 that was quite friendly to the road teams on this NFL Sunday ...
ColdHardFootballFacts.com breaks down Sunday's Atlanta at New Orleans game (1 p.m. ET, Fox).
SAN FRANCISCO -- Five things we learned while watching the Saints beat the 49ers in a real nail-biter on Monday Night Football, with New Orleans winning 25-22 on Garrett Hartley's wounded-duck field goal as time expired ...
NEW ORLEANS -- Things we learned while watching the Saints begin their Super Bowl title defense with a gritty 14-9 victory over the Vikings at a ready-to-rock Superdome ...
It's Fantasy Clicks tradition to do a mini-Revelations off the Thursday night NFL opener; however, it's not typically standard to make season-long judgments -- good or bad -- from one teeny, tiny game. And yet the verdicts might already be in with one all-world quarterback and one desultory receiver.
NEW ORLEANS -- Seen this week's slate of 16 games? It's as competitive a group as I've seen in a while. Maybe not the best slate of games, but the kind of schedule that makes me think: Glad I'm not in a knockout pool this year.
The interminable seven-month wait over, the NFL returns to the national stage tonight when the Vikings and Saints kick it off in New Orleans. The only shame of it all, of course, is the lack of any real drama due to the outcome having been foreordained.
This week, SI.com is rolling out previews for all eight NFL divisions. Today, we tackle the NFC South and AFC South, following up Tuesday's breakdowns of the AFC East and NFC East. The AFC North and NFC North follow Thursday and the AFC West and NFC West conclude things Friday.
The actor came to the city five years ago to rebuild, and finds himself revitalized there too
SI.com has dispatched writers to report on the 32 NFL training camps across the country. Here's what Andrew Lawrence had to say about the Saints camp in Metairie, La. For an archive of all camp postcards, click here.
Now that Fantasy Clicks has cast a net with a significantly larger audience -- thanks to the format change -- I'll have to work doubly hard to entertain the masses every time out (or risk alienating brutally honest Twitter followers like @KSully49 -- just kidding). So, to celebrate this renewed commitment to excellence, let's start with a real 12-team auction draft from Monday night.
Of all the anecdotes and revealing behind-the-scenes snapshots that Super Bowl-winning Saints head coach Sean Payton sprinkled throughout a newly published memoir of his time in New Orleans, the one I can't get over is his detailed description of how he transformed into a certain hoodie-wearing head coach from New England one week last season.
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