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Monday, December 12, 2011

Try not to kick anybody in the face

Tennessee Titans' receiver Nate Washington talked yesterday about the reputation the Saints have gained around the league for "dirty play." It looks like he was asked specifically about Roman Harper but notice that he says Mike Munchak warned the Titans to "watch out for that type of play".
“Honestly, he’s a dirty player,” Washington said according to The Tennessean. “I’ve been watching film on him. He’s dirty. I don’t appreciate it. I’m going to step out in public and say it. It’s unfortunate he grabbed the facemask. But at the same time, you don’t walk over a guy and nudge him with your knee. You don’t do that. That’s dirty. That’s a dirty player. Flat out. This is not just one game. He’s been doing it all season and I’m tired of it, honestly. I hope the league does something about it.”

Washington added that Titans coach Mike Munchak had warned his players to watch out for that type of play, particularly from Harper. When you have guys who are out there head-hunting all the time and causing concussions and others who stomp on opponents, a “nudge” with the knee doesn’t sound all that bad. That type of thing goes on constantly in the NFL and is one of the reasons guys like Rodney Harrison earn reputations as dirty players.


This isn't the first time we've seen the Saints' burgeoning reputation become an issue. The author of that post quoted above sort of wonders whether such a thing is actually warranted, though, since there exist far more egregious examples of "dirty play" around the league. Anyone who watched the Saints-Lions game last week will tell you Detroit was the more undisciplined and, I suppose you could call it "dirtier" team on the filed by far that night. And this was the case even as their leading bad boy Ndamukong Suh was serving a suspension for having kicked someone in the face on Thanksgiving Day.

But for some reason, NFL coaches and players have chosen to tag the Saints as a dirty team whose opponents need to be warned about beforehand. And if more and more opponents are warned to "watch out for that type of play" each week, it's hardly surprising that players will start to interpret every "nudge with the knee" as something uniquely dirty. And so that makes the paper and the next team is "warned" and... well that's how these things get going.

It's become so ridiculous, in fact, that the Titans have also convinced themselves that someone on the Saints' sideline was blowing a phantom whistle during yesterday's game.
“During the game we heard this whistle blowing, but they weren’t stopping the game, they just kept playing,” McCondichie said. “They were loud enough for me to hear it on the microphone on him. They were all trying to figure out why play continued. I asked them if they knew where it came from and they said the New Orleans bench. Nobody saw it, but it was pretty loud and it was definitely a whistle.”

Just because the Titans heard a whistle doesn’t mean the Saints blew one. The whistle could have come from a fan in the stands behind the Saints’ bench. And the Titans aren’t blaming the whistle for their loss. But they do believe the Saints were engaged in some funny business. The Saints have not commented on the issue.


Besides the silly paranoia at work here, we're guessing the Titans haven't heard of the Whistle Monsta yet.



Anyway, like we said, this isn't the first time, we've heard this sort of thing from a Saints opponent. Here's a quick list of incidents that quickly came to mind after I saw that complaint from Washington.

Vikings still seething from Saints' 'dirty' hits on Favre
MANKATO, Minn. -- That ankle that's bothering Brett Favre and that might keep him from returning ... any idea how it got hurt in the first place? Don't ask the Minnesota Vikings.

Coaches are still seething over Favre's treatment by New Orleans in the NFC Championship Game, one the Vikings lost and one where Favre injured his ankle. The Vikings could handle that if ... well, if they didn't believe New Orleans went out of its way to sideline Favre.

But they do. And they're hot.

"Did you think they targeted him," I asked coach Brad Childress.

"Yeah," he said, "as I look through it, yes. As I look at 13 different clips ... as I looked at it, yes. I talk about hitting the quarterback every week, [saying things like] this guy is a different guy if you hit him, if you make him move his feet. But I just felt if you go back and look at that thing, it was whatever ... whatever, whoever, I just know they orchestrated some things that aren't within our rules.


Gregg Williams suggests the Saints want to injure Manning

Defensive coordinator Gregg Williams recently told a Nashville radio station that the Saints plan to rattle Colts quarterback Peyton Manning by hitting him whenever they can, and that the goal is to knock him out of the game.

“This guy’s got a great clock in his head,” Williams told 104.5 The Zone, via ESPN.com. “The big thing is that he
throws the ball so early that we’re going to have to do a good job of
finding ways to get to him and when we do get to him we’re going to
have to make sure he gets a couple ‘remember me’ shots when we get there.”

The Saints applied several “remember me” shots to Favre on Sunday, prompting many a Vikings fan to utter a phrase that for broadcast television purposes would be edited to sound like “forget you.” One such hit to Favre’s legs didn’t draw a flag, even though NFL V.P. of officiating Mike Pereira admitted last night that a roughing the passer penalty should have been called.


Cleveland Browns players accused New Orleans Saints of dirty play

Browns safety Nick Sorensen said the Saints gouged at his eyes and ripped at his face while he was on the ground trying to recover a fumble of the second-half kickoff return.

And he wasn't alone.

Teammates Josh Cribbs and Blake Costanzo echoed Sorensen's allegations. Cribbs said Saints players "were grabbing my crotch" as players scuffled for the loose ball on Cribb's kickoff return.

The Browns are the third team to accuse the Saints of dirty play this season.


My guess is that this is partially just what you get when you hire Gregg Williams. But the snowballing of the Saints' reputation, in particular, likely grew out of their having faced Kurt Warner, Brett Favre, and Peyton Manning in succession during the 2009 playoffs. The Manning "remember me" stuff was nothing out of the ordinary for pre-SuperBowl psych-out talk. Warner and Favre sustained injuries in those games but they were also playing at the very tail end of their careers then. I didn't think either of them took any "dirty" hits but we all know the NFL goes out of its way to protect its marquee players.

And if you've watched the Saints play this year, you'll note that the NFL goes out of its way to protect whoever the opposing quarterback is as they draw more than their share of questionable roughing calls. A few weeks back, the T-P'sMike Triplett actually compiled those numbers for us.
Through 11 games this year, the Saints have been flagged for five roughing the passer penalties, four unnecessary roughness penalties, two personal fouls and two taunting penalties -- an average of more than one 15-yard penalty per game.
This is another way in which the Saints' reputation, based largely on hearsay and coaches who warn players to watch out for things, can tangibly affect the game. Note also that it isn't uncommon for the league office to actually apologize for these mistakes after the fact.
But a few of those penalties were questionable calls. Payton was particularly disappointed in a roughing the passer penalty levied against defensive end Will Smith in the fourth quarter, when replays showed that Smith clearly did not make any helmet contact with Giants quarterback Eli Manning. Former NFL director of officials Mike Pereira said in a Fox Sports chat that the penalty shouldn't have been called.

"I don't know that we tell (Smith) to do a thing different," Payton said.

A similar thing happened earlier this year when the NFL called the Saints to admit they were wrong when they flagged safety Roman Harper for a hit against Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler that kept alive a touchdown drive.


Notice that one of the bad calls the league apologized for came against Roman Harper which shouldn't surprise anyone given his now firmly ensconced reputation.

Meanwhile, Eagles quarterback Michael Vick has claimed that NFL officials are out to get him, personally. Vick told reporters earlier this season that he doesn't know why he doesn't "get the 15-yard flags like everybody else does."

This prompted some fact-checking at the time which found Vick received 0.88 roughing calls per every 100 passes placing him 9th in the league which is moderately favorable. The Saints' Drew Brees, by comparison was only 21st among NFL quarterbacks drawing an average of 0.51 roughing calls per 100 passes.

Of course that hasn't stopped people from baselessly asserting that Brees receives "special treatment" from NFL referees. But now that this assertion is out there, it isn't surprising to see officials hesitate to flag the same kind of hits on Brees they so regularly penalize the Saints' defense for.

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