NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Former New Orleans defensive coordinator Gregg Williams testified that he tried to shut down the team's bounty system when
the NFL began investigating but was overruled by interim Saints head coach Joe Vitt, according to transcripts from appeals
hearings obtained by The Associated Press.
According to the transcripts, Williams said that then-assistant Vitt responded to a suggestion that the pay-for-pain setup
be abandoned with an obscenity-filled speech about how NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell "wasn't going to ... tell us to ...
stop doing what won us the Super Bowl. This has been going on in the ... National Football League forever, and it will go
on here forever, when they run (me) out of there, it will still go on."
Williams and Vitt were among a number of witnesses whose testimony was heard by former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue, who
on Tuesday overturned four player suspensions in the case. Tagliabue was appointed by Goodell to handle the final round of
appeals. The AP obtained transcripts of Tagliabue's closed-door hearings through a person with a role in the case.
Vitt was a Saints assistant who was banned for six games for his part in the scandal but now is filling in for head coach
Sean Payton, who was suspended for the entire season. Williams was suspended indefinitely by Goodell. Others who testified
included former defensive assistant Mike Cerullo, the initial whistleblower and considered a key NFL witness.
Transcripts portray the former coaching
colleagues, all part of the Saints' 2010 Super Bowl championship, as
bitterly disagreeing
with one another and occasionally contradicting how the NFL
depicted the bounty system.
Vitt, Williams and Cerullo appeared
separately before Tagliabue and were questioned by lawyers for the NFL
and lawyers representing
the players originally suspended by Goodell: Jonathan Vilma, Will
Smith, Scott Fujita and Anthony Hargrove.
Tagliabue's ruling found that "Saints' coaches and managers led a deliberate, unprecedented and effective effort to obstruct
the NFL's investigation. ..."
The transcripts, which could be entered as evidence in Vilma's pending defamation case against Goodell, include numerous testy,
and sometimes humorous, exchanges between witnesses and attorneys — and between Tagliabue and the attorneys.
Offering to take a lie detector test, Vitt
challenged versions given by Williams and Cerullo. Vitt vowed to sue
Cerullo and
described Williams as "narcissistic." He referred to both as
disgruntled former employees who were fired, even though, publicly,
the Saints said Williams' departure for St. Louis was by mutual
agreement. Vitt depicted Cerullo as incompetent and said he
missed work numerous times and offered bizarre, fabricated excuses
for his absences.
Vitt was asked whether he oversaw Cerullo's
attempts to destroy evidence related to bounties, which the NFL
determined the
Saints sanctioned from 2009 to 2011, with thousands of dollars
offered for hits that injured opponents and knocked them out
of games.
"No. The answer is no," Vitt said. "Cerullo is an idiot."
Williams referred to the case as "somewhat of a witch hunt." He said he wants to coach in the NFL again, "took responsibility
so that nobody else had to," and that Vilma has "been made a scapegoat."
Williams stood by his earlier sworn
statement that Vilma pledged a $10,000 bounty on quarterback Brett Favre
in the Saints'
game against the Minnesota Vikings for the NFC championship. But
Williams also said that the performance pool he ran was aimed
at team bonding, not bounties, and that he saw a difference
between asking players to hit hard legally, which he said he did,
and asking them to purposely injure an opponent, which he said no
one in the organization condoned.
"The game is about a mental toughness on top of a physical toughness," Williams testified at one point. "You know, it's not
golf."
Williams, however, acknowledged he suggested Favre should be knocked out of the game.
"We want to play tough, hard-nosed football
and look to get ready to play against the next guy. ... Brett is a
friend of mine,
and so that's just part of this business," Williams said. "You
know, at no time, you know, are we looking to try to end anybody's
career."
Williams described player pledges to the
pool as "nominal" and said they rarely kept the money they earned,
either putting
it back in the pool or offering it as tips to equipment personnel.
In the case of the large amounts pledged during the playoffs,
Williams described it as "air" or "funny money" or "banter,"
adding that he never actually saw any cash collected or distributed
and had no idea what would have happened to the money if Cerullo
collected it.
Cerullo testified that league investigators misrepresented what he told them, and that, during the playoffs following the
2009 regular season, he kept track of large playoff pledges on note pads but didn't collect the money.
Cerullo said hits for cash started with
Williams telling the staff that "Sean kind of put him in charge of
bringing back a
swagger to the defense ... so he wanted to brainstorm with us as
coaches what we thought we could do. ... At one point in
one of those meetings, Joe Vitt suggested (his previous teams) had
a pay-for-play, pay-for-incentive program that the guys
kind of bought into and kind of had fun with, and, you know, that
was his suggestion. At that point, Gregg also admitted that
other places he was at, they had the same type of thing. And at
that point, Gregg kind of ran with it."
Cerullo described pregame meetings during the playoffs, when the Saints faced quarterback Kurt Warner of the Arizona Cardinals
and then Favre.
He said Vitt told players Warner "should have been retired" and "we're going to end the career tomorrow of Kurt Warner." Cerullo
also quoted Vitt as saying of Favre: "That old man should have retired when I was there. Is he retiring, isn't he retiring
— that whole (thing) is over, you know, tomorrow. ... We'll end the career tomorrow. We'll force him to retire. ..."
Cerullo testified that, once word came that the NFL was investigating, Williams told him to delete computer files about bounty
amounts and that Vitt checked on his progress.
Asked what motivated him to come forward as a whistleblower with an email to the league in November 2011, Cerullo replied:
"I was angry for being let go from the Saints."
Later, he testified: "I was angry at Joe Vitt, and I wanted to show that I was fired for lying and I witnessed Joe Vitt lying
and he still had a job. So, that was my goal of reaching out to the NFL."
The transcripts also portray Tagliabue's command of the proceedings, including his efforts to rein in the lawyers.
"I'm going to intervene much more
significantly, going forward," Tagliabue interjected at one point,
"because I am extremely
concerned that this is getting to be cumulative, confusing and
useless, and I do not preside over proceedings that are cumulative,
confusing and useless."
There also were lighter moments, such as when Tagliabue announced: "I thought I was going to get through this proceeding only
by drinking coffee. I'm getting to the point where I need a Bloody Mary."