The difference is, this guy was specifically calling for career-ruining--and possibly life-ruining--injuries and was paying people to do it. That's being a thug or a hitman, plain and simple. Payton should absolutely sit out a year and Gregg should be out of the NFL for good. And, any players injured by these idiots should be mobilizing their lawyers.
Was a hit, that injured a player, dirty? If a hit was dirty I think the book should be thrown at the player and likewise to a coach who instructs their players to commit
dirty hits.
In Criminal Law 101 you'll hear about there are 2 components to a crime: the guilty act and the guilty intention, and how you need both of them in order to have an actual crime. Williams obviously spoke of the result he wanted (players injured) but unless he's advocating dirty hits to accomplish this is vastly overblown.
Suppose you had Williams saying what he did but all the Saints defenders making clean tackles then I see little to complain about, the players are acting in accordance with the rules.
OTOH, suppose a coach doesnt say anything but his players do a bunch of dirty things which leaves others injured, I see a really big problem there.
That said, it makes me cringe when I routinely see dirty plays that the refs don't call. The total amount of damage the other 31 teams might inflict will dwarf what the Saints will do, even with Williams as a coach, but you don't hear about the league talking about how it's going to tighten up on officiating to further protect the players, it's all about roasting the Saints.
I don't respect that and I think the hyper-focus on the Saints actually blinds us to the much bigger problem. I never heard BB instruct the Patriots to injure players but I still cringed and was embarrassed when Merriweather launched himself, head first, into Todd Head. I thought he should have been ejected from the game and if we lost as a result of him not being able to play I would have been fine with it.
Unfortunately the incidents like that, which take place routinely, get overshadowed. Stalin was right, 1 death is a tragedy but a million is a statistic, in this case the Saints are the "tragedy" and all the other stuff will be overlooked. I believe that one should clean their own backyard before criticizing others about their yard. So, while I continue to see nasty plays which have severe risk of maiming players go uncalled, and also see the NFL do their best to sell DVDs which feature plenty of hits which doubtlessly injured players, I'll be rather unimpressed.
To me it reeks of hypocricy, and a rather transparent attempt to avoid any kind of government attention by showing how hard their going to bring the hammer down on Williams but sending very mixed messages on what's going to be allowed on the field via the officiating.
