Saints head coach Sean Payton has been suspended for the 2012 season without pay. GM Mickey Loomis has been suspended for eight weeks without pay. In former Rams news, Saints assistant head coach Joe Vitt has been suspended six weeks without pay. The Saints were also fined half a million dollars and have to forfeit second-round picks this year and next. Individual players are still being reviewed with any possible punishments to come down at a later date.
Accused of architecting and funding the scheme, and (along with Vitt) misleading league investigators, Williams seems to have gotten the harshest punishment. The guess here is that NFL investigators are going to be digging very thoroughly into his Washington, Buffalo and Tennessee tenures between now and the end of the 2012 season, possibly giving Goodell reason to ban him beyond 2012, maybe even permanently. So far, Williams' transgressions haven't pulled Jeff Fisher in with him - Rams Nation has to hope very hard that continues to be the case, or this franchise is screwed yet again.
Though the notoriety of Williams' bounty system is reportedly its payoffs for knocking opposing players out of games, the NFL edict seems to be aimed at any kind of bounty system, even if there's just a pool paying off for recovered fumbles, downed punts, first downs, or the like. All teams have been ordered to provide written guarantees to Goodell by March 30th that they do not have bounty systems in place.
This would seem to make Dave McGinnis the Rams' acting defensive coordinator. I'll have updates here as needed.
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Tweets from Jim Thomas:
* Rams surprised by severity of Williams' suspension, thought he would get eight weeks.
* Williams is suspended without pay. Suspension is effective immediately, so he's not even allowed to have anything to do with installing the new defense in OTAs or training camp.
* Steve Spagnuolo could be the Saints' head coach for at least the first six weeks of the season while Joe Vitt is suspended. See, Spagnuolo came to St. Louis in 2009 and WAS coaching a Super Bowl-quality team after three seasons!
* (Though he was terrible at it in Tennessee) Chuck Cecil could be considered for the acting DC position. McGinnis is the favorite for the job.
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Jeff Fisher announced yesterday that he will not name a new defensive coordinator nor hire an additional defensive coach to make up for Williams' absence. As to whether Williams will be brought on board when/if he is reinstated by Goodell, Fisher said he'll cross that bridge when he comes to it. Williams' responsibilities will be spread out between Fisher and the other defensive coaches. It sounds like the plan for the time being is for Fisher to call the defensive plays on gameday.
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