Uh oh

Time to cut Kevin Houser again

NEW ORLEANS – Less than three months after winning Super Bowl XLIV, the reigning World Champion New Orleans Saints suddenly find themselves playing a major part in a potentially scandalous story involving prescription painkillers and alleged theft, cover up and extortion.

In a 12-page lawsuit filed Friday in Jefferson Parish, Geoff Santini, the team’s former security director and a retired FBI special agent, accused the team of covering up the theft of Vicodin pills from the team’s training room by two “senior staff members’’ before the 2009 season.

Interesting thing about that Neworleans.com article by Brian Allee-Walsh. It reads,

The two “senior staffers’’ who were caught on a hidden camera taking the pills from a drug cabinet were not named in the lawsuit.

And yet the big bold headline says

Head coach Sean Payton, top assistant Joe Vitt implicated in Vicodin theft at New Orleans Saints facilities

Obviously Allee-Walsh didn't just pull those names out of his ass. Where did they come from?

Update: Oh wait nevermind. It's all over the freaking internets.

Based on extensive discussions with multiple sources having knowledge of the situation but who have requested anonymity given the sensitive nature of the case, the two unnamed senior staff members are assistant head coach/linebackers coach Joe Vitt and head coach Sean Payton.

Per the lawsuit, "Senior Staff Member A" (i.e., Payton) allegedly was receiving sufficient Vicodin to constitute abuse. The lawsuit does not specifically allege that "Senior Staff Member A" was stealing the pills.

Let me just take a second here to add my completely irresponsible speculative blogger's opinion. Sean Payton as a fiending pill-popping type? Yeah I'd believe that.