Still can't take away their Super Bowl win.
I love how anytime someone "roughs" up a quarterback like the Saints did to Favre and Warner in 2009, we have to hear how "dirty" and how "bad" they are for being a mean defense and trying to murder the quarterback.
History proved, that (both) Kurt Warner and Brett Favre played horrible under pressure.
Not a Patriots fan at all, but when they played Warner in the Super Bowl, they totally put him off his marker by physically pounding him early in that game to the point when the Rams finally got their stuff together to challenge them in that Super Bowl, it was too late.
From watching Favre with the Packers, you cannot deny if you knocked him around, and got physical with him, it took him out totally out of his game and he started playing badly.
That playoff game against the Vikings back in 2003 or 2004 where he threw 4 INT's that just proved it. The Vikings sacked him early and were knocking the crap out of him, in return he starts over throwing WR's, and throwing stupid interceptions all in the wrong areas.
But the Saints are not the only ones to play the Bounty game.
Buddy Ryan and the Eagles did it from the late 1980's to early 1990's, and no one really cared. Buddy was a *****, but back then no one cared because the commissioner wasn't worried about making rules to favor the offense, that was them good ole days of real football where we didn't have 10 300 passing yard games every week.
I'm sure the Saints are not the only one that does it, but they surely get thrown under the bus. If the NFL wants to play fair, they better also investigate every other team, because I'm sure it's not just the Saints. 1 out of 32 teams in the league cannot be the only ones to play the bounty game.
I support the Saints, and I agree it was wrong, but I also thing it's being blown out of proportion. Favre is retired, and that's all I have heard today is how the Vikings could have won a Super Bowl had the Saints not tried to murder him out there. But do you see Favre himself crying and saying something? No, he's retired and don't even play anymore. If that made a difference, you might as well go back to 1990 when the Giants were out to murder Joe Montana in the NFC Championship game, and successfully took Joe out of the game. Montana suffered 2 broken ribs, broken elbow, and a broken finger. Giants went on to win the Super Bowl that year, but no one tries to go back and take that away from them, about all the late hits and how physically challenging they were in that game. No one even cared back then.