SB Nation St. Louis - St. Louis Rams DC Gregg Williams Suspended Indefinitely For Bounty Program

Gregg Williams Vision Quests To Southeast Asia; Thailand Already Tired Of Saints Bounty Scandal News

2012-08-16T13:15:02Z

The Saints bounty scandal's biggest name has finally made his next move, and it's a weird one. St. Louis Rams' indefinitely suspended defensive coordinator probably won't spend much time keeping up with his Rams' defensive exploits, if the latest news about him is any indication: Gregg Williams going on what appears to be a vision quest to rural Thailand. I, too, find Yingluck Shinawatra remarkably attractive for a head of state, but I'm not sure I'd leave the country over it.

Hat tip to Turf Show Times. In all seriousness, this seems like a real, live attempt to change his ways—it's vastly more work than the court-of-public-opinion-mandated tearful appearance on Oprah, and in addition to visiting a not-so-touristy section of Thailand and communing with tribes there(!) he plans on backpacking into Myanmar, not an especially safe place to be, and Laos, not an especially exciting place to be unless you like state communism.

I think his long suspension is completely justified, and I'm not sure he should ever be reinstated, but if he's going to all this trouble it seems clear that he's at least sincerely remorseful about it, which is an unmitigated good thing.

Saints Bounty Scandal: St. Louis Rams Avoid Worst Of Gregg Williams-Related Punishments

2012-05-04T12:15:02Z

The brunt of the New Orleans Saints' bounty scandal suspensions have finally been handed out, and from the perspective of a St. Louis Rams fan it looks like their involvement in the whole strange thing—they hired a guy who will now never coach a down for them—could have been far, far worse. The Saints lost Jonathan Vilma for the entire 2012 season, and they'll be without Will Smith for four games. Meanwhile, Anthony Hargrove, now of the Green Bay Packers, is out eight games, and Cleveland Browns linebacker Scott Fujita will miss three.

Considering all that punishment, the loss of a defensive coordinator who was apparently unable to defensive-coordinate without the assistance of cash incentives for ending Kurt Warner's career doesn't seem so bad, does it?

In one sense, the Rams' involvement in the bounty scandal remains quintessentially Rammy: They managed to get themselves tied up in, and nearly brought down by, a situation that had nothing to do with them, either by absurd accident, complete obliviousness, or calculated risk. This is different in at least one sense, though: By only losing Gregg Williams, the Rams finally managed to avoid the worst of something, for once.

For more on the Saints bounty scandal and the Rams' involvement in it, check out our Gregg WIlliams Bountygate stream, populated with all our updates and analysis on the subject. Related: No matter how widespread bounty programs are, the St. Louis Rams must fire Gregg Williams.

Gregg Williams Pregame Speech: Audio Proof That Bounty Program Existed, Williams Is Unpleasant

2012-04-05T14:12:28Z

Disgraced defensive coordinator (and bounty program architect) Gregg Williams and the St. Louis Rams turn out to have been a perfect match, in hindsight: Neither entity can get out of its own way. Just as the bounty scandal neared the end of the news cycle audio of Williams's pregame speech to the New Orleans Saints was leaked in which he repeatedly says, "Kill the head and the body will die" about the San Francisco 49ers—and then, proving a... malleable grasp of metaphor, proceeds to suggest more directly that they've "got to do everything in the world to make sure [they] kill Frank Gore's head."

Oh yeah—then he suggests the Saints hit Alex Smith under the chin and rubs his fingers together, confirming with a documentarian present that the program exists. I'll say this for Williams: He doesn't appear to have been ashamed of it, until it ruined his career. The more that comes out about Williams, the happier I am that he'll be spending the next few years coaching an electric football table.

Work-unsafe audio after the jump. It'll kill your head.

Bill Parcells, New Orleans Saints Continue Sniffing Around Each Other

2012-03-29T14:04:22Z

So: Bill Parcells and the New Orleans Saints continue to slink around the idea that the Big Tuna might serve as interim head coach while the smaller tuna, Sean Payton, serves a one-year suspension for perpetuating the abhorrent bounty system of current St. Louis Rams defensive-coordinator-in-exile Gregg Williams. This will be great, because Payton learned everything he knows from Parcells, including maintaining plausible deniability while perpetuating abhorrent bounty systems.

This has been weird, as NFL rumors go—the Saints and Parcells have never really denied anything, but no news has broken, so we keep going back and forth between "they're talking, and it's going to happen" and "sure, they're talking, but it probably won't happen," without even the guidance of an anonymous source.

Meanwhile, the Rams don't plan to replace Gregg Williams with much of anything, which has to be doing terrible (and probably well-deserved) things to his self-esteem. I've heard that, instead of paying players to injure other players, the Rams plan to pay every player this year a pre-defined salary, based on his performance and service time.

Could work.

More on the bounty scandal: The Rams should fire Gregg Williams, no matter how widespread bounty programs are.

Saints Bounty Scandal: Sean Payton's Suspension Could Be Appealed

2012-03-27T21:55:26Z

In the immediate aftermath of the New Orleans Saints' bounty scandal the St. Louis Rams dumped new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams without a second thought. Saints fans—and management, whatever remains—have, for obvious reasons, not given up so quickly on head coach Sean Payton and his year-long suspension. Besides the #freepayton shirts there exists now the possibility that an appeal might leave him free to coach the Saints for some part of the 2012 season.

Of course, that move might not be worth the disruption that comes with it; is a small period of time at the helm of the 2012 Saints worth a potentially delayed start to his 2013 preparation?

Luckily—or unluckily—the Rams have no such difficult decision to make; they seem determined, instead, to move on under the collective, unconscious fiction that they never really hired Gregg Williams at all.

More bountygate analysis from SB Nation St. Louis:

Across the Mississippi, Senator Dick Durbin called for hearings about the bounty scandals. Because lord knows we need more grandstanding about sports in our politics.
Sean Payton and Gregg Williams made their bounty scandal bed, but the teams that hired them have to lie in it.
No matter what his suspension turned out to be, the Rams should have fired Gregg Williams.

Saints Bounty Scandal: #FreePayton Shirts Outsell #FreeWilliams Shirts, Handily

2012-03-26T13:01:12Z

A friend of mine—the proprietor of SpreeGoogs, and the only New Orleans Saints fan I know—recently got a t-shirt in the mail from the lovely people at Canal Street Chronicles. It's about the Saints' bounty scandal, and Sean Payton, and hashtags:

They look to be selling pretty well! So I decided to head over to Twitter and see how the grassroots effort to free the new St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams, from the shackles the NFL has capriciously placed on him just for paying players to injure other players is working out.

So far: Not extremely well, from what I can tell. Don't worry, Gregg, once people get over the reactionary horror of that whole paying people to injure Kurt Warner for our ostensible amusement thing, I'm sure St. Louis will rally behind you just like New Orleans has for Sean Payton. Oh, and you'll have to win a Super Bowl for us, too. That'd definitely help. And maybe have not ended Kurt Warner's career. Definitely one of those two, is where I would start.

NFL Bounties: IL Sen. Dick Durbin Calls For Hearing On NFL Bounties

2012-03-22T19:59:07Z

The controversy swirling around now-suspended St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams continues to build as the government joined in Thursday. According to the Associated Press, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin is calling for a hearing to examine the bounty system used by Williams while he was the defensive coordinator with the New Orleans Saints.

Durbin contends the bounty system should fall under the designation of "criminal":

"Let's be real basic about it here. If this activity were taking place off of a sporting field, away from a court, nobody would have a second thought (about whether it's wrong). 'You mean, someone paid you to go out and hurt someone?'" Durbin said in a telephone interview before raising the issue on the floor of the Senate.

The NFL has already leveled harsh, unprecedented punishments against the Saints and their staff. And according to NFL spokesman Greg Aiello, the league is willing to talk with Sen. Durbin about the issue.

Stay tuned to SB Nation St. Louis for more information, and for in-depth analysis on the St. Louis Rams, be sure to visit Turf Show Times or visit SB Nation NFL for more news and notes around the league

Sean Payton, Gregg Williams Made Their Bountygate Bed; New Orleans Saints, St. Louis Rams Lie In It

2012-03-22T13:01:22Z

Sean Payton will be suspended from the New Orleans Saints for the year. Gregg Williams has been suspended indefinitely, leaving the St. Louis Rams without their new defensive coordinator. The fruits of the bounty scandal—bountygate, if you want to be that way—are here, and they're as brutal as anyone was expecting. At first it might seem like the Saints and especially the Rams have been roughed up for the crimes of their employees, but this kind of thing isn't accurately pinned to an individual; what happened here is institutional corruption, and only the punishment of those institutions can combat it.

The case for punishing the Saints should be clear enough—the NFL knows who knew what when and for how long. But the Rams, too, were complicit in this. I'm not calling Jeff Fisher a liar when he suggests the Rams didn't know about the bounty program, but I am skeptical of that claim, especially given the apparent magnitude of this problem. I think it's more reasonable to say that maybe they didn't want to know what was going on, and didn't look especially hard.

That kind of willful ignorance has costs. The Rams are going to bear some of them.

More bountygate coverage from SB Nation St. Louis:

The Saints' braintrust couldn't escape the effects of the bounty scandal, no matter where they were.
The bounty scandal reminds us that the NFL is an ugly game—and we should be sure we want to see how the sausage is made before we go too much farther into the factory.
However long his suspension turns out to be, the Rams should fire Gregg Williams.