As the Bounty Gate story continues to play out, one Pittsburgh Steelers player has made it known that he will be real interested to see the stance the league takes towards the New Orleans Saints and current St. Louis Rams defensive coordinator Gregg Williams, as linebacker James Harrison took to his Facebook page on Sunday to say, “We\’ll see how concerned the NFL is about player safety when they decide what the punishment for the saints is.” Harrison polled his followers and friends at the end of the post with the question, “What do u think it should be?”
Harrison, and all of the Steelers defensive players for that matter, have been in the cross hairs of the league for several years now as the league says they are taking a tougher stance on player safety. Some have accused Harrison in the past of premeditated hits with the intent to injure players, but he has never been accused of being a bounty hunter. Harrison has a good reason to watch the outcome of the leagues findings as he has been fined a total of six times over the last few seasons with the latest incurring a one-game suspension for his hit on Cleveland Browns quarterback Colt McCoy in week 14 last season.
As I mentioned in my post on Ryan Clark early Sunday morning, we would be foolish to think that both organized and unorganized bounty type systems do not exist in nearly every locker room around the league, but the documentation that commissioner Roger Goodell supposedly has in regards to what happened with the Saints should invoke one of the strongest disciplines of a coach and a franchise that we have never seen before. If Goodell and the league are as serious as they say they are in regards to player safety, the forthcoming ruling should reflect that to the max and then some. We are not talking about a linebacker merely hitting a quarterback late here, we are talking about players being paid for purposefully doing it with the intent to injury on an organized level.
Much like Harrison, Steeler Nation will be watching the decision of the league and Goodell very closely. Perhaps he will take it more serious than he did when Baltimore Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs verbally admitted to bounties being placed on Steelers players a few years ago. I will not got too much into that hypocrisy, because there will be more written about that in depth by the local Pittsburgh media very soon and I for one can\’t wait to read it and see if it gets a reaction from the league.
