New Orleans a Dirty City and Dirty Team

The past two weeks I have wondered if the Saint’s defense played dirty in their first two playoff games. I didn’t get a chance to watch the game against Arizona, but I did see clips of Kurt Warner getting pounded and knocked out of the game. The clips from that game didn’t appear like hits that were intended to hurt Warner. Then was the game from last week against the Vikings. During the game I saw at least three vicious hits, all of which were dirty and late. I didn’t agree with them and was out raged that a team would try to send Brett Favre to “the grave”. The hit that pushed me over the edge was McCray, a defensive end for the Saints, hitting Favre extremely late and extremely hard. An apparent dirty hit with intent on knocking Brett out of the game.

Still I held out hope that the Saints were not playing dirty but rather, late hits happen in the NFL. So until today they had the benefit of the doubt that they are a good clean hitting and fair playing team. So what happened today that changed my mind? Greg Williams the defensive coordinator for the Saints had some comments on a radio show that disgusted me. He said, “The big thing is that he throws the ball so early that we're going to have to do a good job of finding ways to get to him and when we do get to him we're going to have to make sure he gets a couple 'remember me' shots when we get there.” Now that doesn’t sound so bad, just encouraging hard hits. But when you combine that with what he said next, it’s absolutely absurd for a coach to even suggest this. His next comment was, “And the only thing you'd like for me to say is that if it happens you hope he doesn't get back up and play again. We'll gladly trade a penalty or two if it means that we get to see Curtis Painter instead of Peyton Manning.” That’s right a coach in the NFL suggested that he is encouraging his players to hit Manning hard and late with the intent to hurt him. This to me is no class on the part of the Saints organization. And anyways who would be proud of beating the Colts if Manning didn’t play? I mean come on beating a Manning less Colts really doesn’t say a lot.

So with those comments I now am certain that the previous two weeks where not clean hits but hits on the QB that where with the intent to hurt another player. I think that if a player has an unclean hit on someone else and can be fined for it then so should the coach. In other words if a coach encourages his team to play dirty then he should face the same, if not more, consequences as the players. With that said Greg Williams should be suspended from the Super Bowl and a $25,000 fine imposed on him for encouraging dirty play.