NEW ORLEANS, La. — Meting out unprecedented punishment for a crush-for-cash bounty system that targeted key opposing players, the NFL suspended New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton without pay for next season and indefinitely banned the team’s former defensive coordinator, Gregg Williams.
Payton is the first head coach suspended by the league for any reason, accused of trying to cover up a system of extra cash payouts that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell on Wednesday called “particularly unusual and egregious” and “totally unacceptable.”
Sending a message by taking a harsh stand, Goodell also banned Saints general manager Mickey Loomis for the first eight regular-season games next season — believed to be the first time a GM was suspended by the NFL — and assistant coach Joe Vitt for the first six games.
In addition, Goodell fined the Saints $500,000 and took away their second-round draft picks this year and next.
“We are all accountable and responsible for player health and safety and the integrity of the game.
We will not tolerate conduct or a culture that undermines those priorities,” said Goodell, whose league faces more than 20 concussion-related lawsuits brought by hundreds of former players. “No one is above the game or the rules that govern it.”
Payton, whose salary this season was to be at least $6 million, ignored instructions from the NFL and Saints ownership to make sure bounties weren’t being paid.
The league also chastised him for choosing to “falsely deny that the program existed,” and for trying to “encourage the false denials by instructing assistants to ‘make sure our ducks are in a row.'”
