New Orleans Saints/Washington Redskins: Bounty Hunters

[GoSkins!]

I think that the idea of the bounty program is deplorable and action must be taken to stop this from ever happening again. This starts with punishing the person/organizations involved. I still have this feeling we are on a slippery slope now.

It appears the bounty program got into high gear during the Saints run in the playoffs when people are already playing as hard as they can. That is a point when people are so hyped up they shouldn't have any incentive to hit another player harder than they already do. There is no way that can go unpunished. With that said, I'm trying to get a handle on how bad it really made things in the general course of the regular season (I'm not advocating that it should be allowed then either, just trying to establish the severity of the "crime"). It is coming out that this is a widespread action that happens throughout the NFL and I think there is a tendency when these things happen to adopt a mob mentality and start over vilifying the initially identified perpetrator. I can see how this could be common in defensive locker rooms through the NFL. I can also see how this could have started as something smaller for Williams and then blew up and got out of control with the Saints.

As an example, I always loved the way Sean Taylor went out and hit people. I never really thought of his play as dirty. Heck, I thought of it as the picture of what physical defense should look like... and he, according to other players, was taking home the bounty proceeds most of the time. I know most here on the board have the same opinion of his play (or at least many did back then).

I guess what I'm wondering is if people here on this board thought of the Redskins defense as "dirty" during Williams tenure ? If not, which teams did you/do you think of being dirty and what might you think is their incentive to play that way?