Mike Shanahan drove his golf cart into the one that ‘Skins linebacker/odd choice for Geico pitchman Brian Orakpo was riding during a tournament today at Trump National, which is touted as being in D.C., but actually resides in the former Patton Oswalt stomping grounds of STERLING, VIRGINIA (BURKA BURKA BURRRRRRRRR). Unsilent has the right idea by suggesting that Orakpo show up at OTAs with a neck brace.

- Bernard Pollard doesn’t believe that football will exist in 20 or 30 years, possibly because he’s going to dive headfirst into its knees.

- The Titans have been targeting players with a wrestling background. Should be noted that unfortunately that’s real wrestling and not WRASSLIN’ [Cena sucks]

- Dreamboat, Wes Welker and Bill Belichick went to the Kentucky Derby over the weekend. Massholes are shocked and dismayed to discover that Brady was actually OUTQUEEAHED BY WELKAH! NAWT YOU TOO, LITTLE BUDDY! In other news, Belichick cut loose and let his MILF wear one of the big hats.

- There’s a report that the suspended but still interim Saints coach Joe Vitt instructed Anthony Hargrove to lie about the existence of the bounty program. Once again, this Saints season is going to be so fun.

- The Bills gave Fred Jackson a contract extension. Because when you can lock down a 31-year-old running back coming off a broken leg, you do it.

Affect the head.

The last of the Rog bountygate banhammerings has come, as we all knew that it would. After dishing out punishment to coaches and front office types, Ginger Justice remained to be served on the players. It being against players, you knew it would be rough. But would the punishment be suitably draconian or mere garden-variety trip to the woodshed? We now know The Rog don’t swing the banhammer at anything less than 100 percent strength.

Four players were suspended in all. Jonathan Vilma got a full-year suspension, meaning he and Sean Payton can start scheduling their 12 months on the road together, scouring the landscape for adventures and tales of redemption. Favre destroyer Anythony Hargrove, now with the Packers, got eight games. Will Smith got four games and Scott Fujita, now with the Browns, got three.

Proportionally speaking, a season-long suspension to a 30-year-old linebacker is much more severe than Sean Payton’s lost year. But that’s happens when you get snippy with Goodell’s favorite push-up chronicler.

[Original image via Getty]

Because writing off-season posts about dumb quotes about what people wear to press conferences has me missing football a little more than usual, I’ll lead off the Klearinghouse with this 10-minute video recently posted on Reddit of defense porn with clips of at least one defensive score from each team in the league. I say defensive score and not pick-six because two of the teams shown score on fumble returns and not interceptions. Feel my pedantry!

That said, if can get past the dubsteppy soundtrack, it’s a welcome midday diversion. Some teams get one highlight, while others get as many as three. I’m sure it’s due to availability of highlights or whether your team’s defense has actually made a play in a while.

- New Orleans-based writer Arthur Donnes said the Saints bounty snitch can be identified in the above photo. No, it’s not Brad Pitt, nor is it Maddox, though that hat does lend an air of suspicion. No, it’s former Saints quality control coach Mike Cerullo, who also performed a bevy of assistant tasks with the team from ’07 to 2010. Eh, I liked it better when we could just joke about it being Jeremy Shockey.

- Fox Sports is reporting that Rex Ryan doesn’t want the Jets to be the subject of this year’s “Hard Knocks” which, if true, is a goddamn tragedy. Come on, Rex, don’t let the media scolds convince you that distractions are bad. Distract! Distract! In other news, the Broncos already turned HBO down, so no Pey-Pey premium cable redemption story. The report says a two-team all-Harbaugh season with the 49ers and Ravens is a possibility and would also be death. The Jaguars have let HBO know they are interested. If HBO can make an iso camera on Shadid Khan’s mustache compelling in hour-long chunks, sure. All for it.

- Tim Tebow is battling with two people to trademark the term/act/*fartnoise* of “Tebowing”. But of course. Copyright law was among Jesus’ more arcane teachings.

- Jenny McCarthy and Brian Urlacher had dinner in Beverly Hills on Tuesday and TMZ is taking a page from the Peter King School of Quasi-Reportage and pronouncing them a “maybe couple”. It’s a workable match or the worst-possible curse on a kid’s life, as she’s probably unfit to have children and he’s an already established terrible father.

- Lions president Tom Lewand set the troll bait by saying his ultimate goal is to win many Super Bowls with the Lions. Just like that, he caught himself a Florio.

Why do people complain that the NFL has gone soft? Is it because football has had to undergo some awkward but perhaps necessary changes so that the league doesn’t get sued out of existence? Apparently not! Fran Tarkenton says it’s nothing but the goldurned hippity-hop that has warped young minds with the yo yo yoes and the what up derogatory form of address for a female.

“I think (people who say the NFL has gone soft are) out of line,” Tarkenton said when speaking to ESPN Chicago’s Waddle and Silvy. “I think it’s the gangster rap and this and this and all the stuff and we are going to go out and knock their head sideways. It’s all wrong.”

We’ve enjoyed Fran Tarkenton’s outspoken grumblings when they’ve been directed at Brett Favre or picking fights with Bobby Hebert. But I’m sorry, but we will not countenance him laying the blame for our unquenchable blood lust at the feet of a music subgenre that faded from influence 15 years ago. No sir! If anything, this is an indictment of the hip-hop of today. You guys aren’t doing anything to get blamed for the downfall of society by old white guys, who have to take it back to the ’90s to invoke their rap boogeyman. C’mon, stoke some fear. Don’t worry, I’m sure Drake is on it.

Anyway, it’s good that Tarkenton has only dabbled in things like white-collar crime, which you certainly can’t pin on rap lyrics, unless you count Jay-Z.

‘Bout to be another day of pearl-clutching over bounties up in… well, not here, since we view the media reaction as a mixture of knee-jerky bullsh*t and Saints schadenfreude, but probably everywhere else there will be that. The takeaway from the Gregggggg locker room audio isn’t that Gregg Williams is a bloodthirsty monster so much as he is a breathtakingly oblivious derptard.

What’s stunning though is the NFL was deep into its investigation of the Saints and had already contacted the team when Williams made a fiery speech to his players, audio of which was uncovered by Michael Silver of Yahoo! Sports via documentary filmmaker Sean Pamphilon, who was present for the meeting with cameras.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA What a stoop. Enjoy your future career in landscaping. For all the talk about Frank Gore, it might have made some sense to mention Vernon Davis more than once in his bounty checklist in retrospect. Famous unspoken last words, I guess. My favorite part is where Williams asks his players to target spectators. That’s just cartoonish supervillainy.

What are the odds that an enterprising YouTube mixologist has this autotuned by the end of the day? Even money? Is DJ Steve Porter still in that trade? Either way, no doubt that someone will be on it.

Saints players: AAAHHHHHH THE FINGER THING MEANS THE TAXES BOUNTIES

Yesterday, Peter King tweeted out the names of three linebackers the Saints have signed in the last week and a half, along with a vague needling remark directed at Jonathan Vilma. Presumably, PK is implying that the Saints see the writing on the wall for Vilma, as well as others, and are scurrying to have replacements on hand for when the Ginger Banhammer falls on one or more of their defensive players.

Of course, it being PK, the message would never be that clear. So cheers to Vilma for calling Peter out on his sanctimonious douchebaggery as well as his general lack of coherence.

Probably could have done without the cheap blogger slam, but those are par for the course. We can absorb one so long as it’s in the service of taking shots at the Allagash Gash.

With all the news about bounties in the NFL, it’s about time for us to issue some more of our own. Instead of players, we’re drafting anyone else who works in the NFL. That includes coaches, owners, front office types, referees and league officials who we’d like to see bent in half by a vicious hit. The draft order is as follows.

1. Big Daddy Drew
2. Christmas Ape
3. Unsilent Majority
4. Flubby
5. Captain Caveman
Read the rest of this entry »

Jeremy Shockey can’t get enough of Twitter fights. Fresh off tangling with Amani Toomer the other week over reports that Shockey wanted to return to play for the Giants, Shockey has now settled into a social media bitchfest with Warren Sapp, who yesterday accused him of being the snitch to the league in the Saints bounty scandal, despite the presence of any evidence and reporters familiar with the case saying that it plain isn’t true.

Nevertheless, Shockey is determined to clear his not-quite-good but still non-snitchy name with the public, lest he receive stitches or another form of non-rhyming retribution.

To that end, he’s done things like challenge Sapp to take a lie detector test on-air on ESPN. Now, this afternoon, Shockey posted what he claims is a text conversation with Sean Payton that purportedly clears Shockey of involvement. Even though, you know, using Payton as a credible defense right now might not be the best idea, given that he’s actually being suspended for lying more than the actual bounty business. Not that it matters. I’m just glad that Shockey has granted us a peek into player-coach sexting exchanges.

If you want to use the punishment handed down from the NFL against the Saints as an opportunity to make a troll faces and cruelly heap derision on Who Dat Nation, by all means. I’m indulging quite a bit myself. I greatly anticipate Sean Payton being forced to spend a year wandering the Earth in an effort to come to grips with his disgrace. Make no mistake, however, that this entire ruling is completely f*cked and indefensible. The NFL in official language is doing its best to play the part of the aggrieved, with Goodell saying the worst part of the Saints behavior is that they had the nerve to lie to the league. Which is stupid, because every or damn near every team has lied to the NFL about not having bounties. The league just didn’t bother to follow up with the others.

As has been the theme ever since the league could no longer ignore or escape the danger it faces over concussions and their long-term consequences on players, the NFL aims to make the game safer, or at least outwardly appear to do so, because it wishes to avoid a litany of lawsuits from former players. The bounty scandal plays right into that. Bounty systems have long existed as a little-recognized but very real part of the game. The NFL knew this, but now the league sees an opportunity to cast blame on the players and coaches themselves for persisting injury issues. You can imagine how the reasoning goes: “How can the NFL’s efforts to make the game safe be effective if the players are just intent on dispensing kill shots for profit.”

Some intrepid Rog bootlickers are going so far as to hail Goodell for the Saints decision. Why? It’s an extreme CYA move by a heavy-handed commissioner more concerned with the league’s liability than anything else. Still, people like CBS Sports columnist Mike Freeman see great vision and wisdom in the act of punishing one team for the crimes of many. Just read this sh*tpile.

As a result of Goodell’s actions — the right actions — this type of extremeness will die a glorious death, at least for the near future.

Ooh, the near future! That’ll show ‘em. That’s Ginger Hammer justice: stopping a horrendous practice for the short term, until the heat blows off and teams just start doing it again. Or at least long enough that the media has made sure to let everyone know that we care.

Fans don’t care if Payton berates reporters with loads of foul language or bans them from covering practice (which is against NFL rules) or has Vicodin issues or is sued by the former head of security. They don’t care if Payton was a bully. He won. He brought them a Super Bowl. That’s all that matters to fans.

WAAAAAHHHHHH HE SAID BAD WORDS TO REPORTERS! You can mention the Vicodin stuff, and it’s bad, but the league clearly didn’t care enough when it surfaced to take any action. But they’re content to trot it out now as a pattern of untoward behavior on Payton’s part. Is Payton an arrogant asswipe who doesn’t want to answer your questions? Probably, but then so are the vast majority of NFL head coaches. If this was such an issue, why didn’t you write about it before you had the chance to throw dirt on his grave?

The problem is, all along, in a somewhat isolated media market, Payton was becoming out of control. I knew Payton when he worked in New York. He was a nerd. The power in New Orleans changed him into something different, and that difference, in my opinion, is what allowed the culture of Bountygate to grow.

Let this be a lesson: with unchecked power and the isolated fiefdom of a team frequently covered by the national media, a lowly nerdlinger can become a malevolent tyrant of a head coach.

No wonder Goodell feels like he can do anything with enablers like this.

Well, this has turned into quite the eventful day all of a sudden. Before we descend into the supreme joke fodder that is Tebow to the Jets, let’s make sure to give the Ginger Hammering the attention it is due:

Saints coach Sean Payton has been suspended for one year, former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams was suspended indefinitely, general manager Mickey Loomis was suspended for eight regular-season games, the team was fined $500,000 and lost two second-round draft picks (one in 2012 and ’13) as a result of a bounty program conducted by the team during the 2009-11 seasons.

Looks like Payton is gonna have some time to heal up that leg. Jeff Fisher will have to practice his lofty meshology with a new defensive coordinator. Also: BAHAHAHAHAHA SO LONG, GREGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!

As we suspected, the Saints are pretty f*cked for this upcoming season. Gotta say, though, for all the bluster that this was going to much more severe punishment than Spygate, I’m a little disappointed. True, the Pats didn’t get any suspensions, but in terms of picks, two second-rounders isn’t all that much worse than one first. I know the Saints don’t have a first-rounder this year, but the NFL could have easily taken next year’s first. I WANTED BLOOD! As for fines, Belichick and the Pats got hit with $750,000 while the Saints got $500,000. UPDATE: Mickey Loomis is also getting fined $500,000, so there’s that. But then fines don’t mean sh*t. Those are the biggest slaps on the wrist of all.