A Grain of Saul: Goodell’s punishment over the top

The NFL’s suspension of the New Orleans Saints head coach stole the headlines; but in the… The NFL’s suspension of the New Orleans Saints head coach stole the headlines; but in the shadows, Tim Tebow lurked.

For the first time since his late teens, Tebow made a significant career decision — agreeing to be traded to the New York Jets — and nobody is talking about it. The reason?

Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner, executed one of the most controversial suspensions in the history of the league. His victim? Sean Payton.

Payton was not just part, but the head of a staff that was rewarding players for injuring opposing athletes, essentially handing out bounty rewards for certain players’ legs (“Hey, take Favre out of the game by the second quarter, and there will be a $10,000 check in your locker”). Goodell’s response? Dishing out a one-year suspension, leaving the Saints without their Super Bowl-winning head coach for the entire 2012 season.

This is the coach who led a previously 3-13 team back into the playoffs for the first time in six years. This is the coach who did it in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, carrying an entire city on his back and putting all its faith in the unproven arm of Drew Brees.

This is the guy who followed that season by reaching the NFC Championship game, only to be knocked out by the Chicago Bears — a team his out-gained, and by all accounts, outplayed, that day. For his strides, he took the NFL Coach of the Year award — with 44 out of 50 votes.

Two years later, the Saints’ Drew Brees was outdueling Peyton Manning on the biggest stage in the game: the Super Bowl. Payton and Brees brought the Lombardi Trophy back to New Orleans, and the Saints have been in the Super Bowl hunt every year since.

When news of the bounties broke, he received harsh criticism from columnists and shrugs from players.

The reason? Everyone knows this kind of thing happens in every locker room. The Saints are like the car that sped along with traffic and got nailed with a speeding ticket.

Most players seemed surprised it was an issue. Long-time offensive lineman and current ESPN analyst Damien Woody said, “The bounty program happens all around the league … not a surprise.”

Payton is the guy who used to be known for locking himself in team facilities, sleeping on couches and studying plays on off-days. He seems more like the kind of guy who would be rewarding hard work, not taking shortcuts by injuring the best opponents and certainly not by rewarding those shortcuts.

And in all likelihood, the reason he seems that way is because, well, he actually is that way. Payton didn’t touch the defense. That was Gregg Williams’ department. And nobody touches Williams’ defense.

You see, Goodell’s one-year-suspension decision isn’t just throwing the book at a guy. It’s not dropping the mallet.

It’s the hammer. It’s the sledgehammer. It’s dropping an anvil from the top of the Empire State Building after strapping C4 to it. Literally destroying everything around Sean Payton and wherever he lands.

For the first time since he arrived, Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees is in an odd flux with contract negations. Simply put, he’s unhappy with the franchise tag instead of the big-money, long-term deal.

Now the team is left without its head coach, the coach that made Brees good enough to get away with being publicly unhappy about his contract.

Most people will argue that the Saints will be fine; they still have all the same players, right? What’s the big fuss? Fill in an interim head coach, slide a guy here and a guy there, give Drew Brees the ball and, boom — it’s all rigged up and ready to go.

But that doesn’t win games over the course of a 16-game season. You can light a fire under your guys, play for the coach and do it this week, but you can’t say that over and over for 16 weeks. With Payton gone, there is a serious lapse in leadership. Williams would be next in line, but he’s suspended too; the orders from the top would come from General Manager Mickey Loomis — but he’s gone for 8 games.

Did I mention the draft? Oh, yeah. That’s about a month away. Well, Goodell took two of their second-round picks to go along with the three most important people in a championship organization. Not that any of those three people can be expected to draft the team anyway, right? They’re suspended. Williams indefinitely.

So where does this leave the rest of the Saints? Well, right about in the eye of the storm. A losing season in the NFL is not a good thing to go through, especially when your record-breaking quarterback is in a contract year.

The big bucks they’ll have to serve up to Brees if they have a bad year and need him back will undoubtedly take money away from everyone else. Not only that, but if they can’t give Brees what he wants because they reach a point of being too fractured, well, then good luck finding a quarterback like him.

This off-season, Matt Flynn was the cream of the crop — outside of the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sign Peyton Manning.

So was it just? Did the punishment fit the crime? How will Goodell look if this opens the door to the demise of a premier NFL franchise? In New Orleans, they are a heroic NFL franchise.

I’d say no. I’d say Goodell’s reputation of having a heavy hand was only propped on a pedestal for everyone to see. All those James Harrison Twitter rants about Goodell being an outsider in his own league seem just a little bit more plausible. Not that he’s much worse than the NBA’s commissioner (cough, David Stern, cough).

So while we’re all zoned in on the new-look Broncos, the battle between Sanchez and Tebow in New York, the development of RG3 and Andrew Luck, don’t forget about the poor ol’ Saints: the team without a coach.