Saints fined $500,000, lose 7th round pick for maskless postgame celebration (1 Viewer)

[blackadder]

The effectiveness of masks INDOORS at a party, with no distancing is highly debateable and there are studies that support that conclusion. The virus is airborne and floats in aerosol. It will exit with your breaths through sides, top and bottom of mask. And for a lot of these cloth masks it’s coming through the mask itself.

So this seems as much about keeping up appearances as anything, or Goodell just sticking it to the Saints and Payton because he can.

Dancing, yelling, whooping it up equals more breaths and more forceful exhalation. Indoors in a locker room...close quarters.

I mask and I think it’s a net benefit and reduces risk WITH social distancing and capacity limits. But it seems kind of silly to allow a party in a locker room with no distance and think cloth masks are going to make a major difference.

 

[VPCajun]

Our only grounds would be the same defense when I call out a student for violating school rules, “well sally is also on her phone, why don’t you say anything to her?!?”

Welllll... why aren’t you saying anything to belichek, er, sally?!?

 

[St4ever]

This was our second infraction which is why the fine is more.

and it would be great payback to the league for us to win the Super Bowl and only lose the last pick in the last round.

 

[*KamaraG!rl*]

Rams posted a mask-less post-game celebration Monday after beating Bucs. Waiting to see if they get similar treatment.

 

[Saint Floyd]

Use it. We need every last chip on every last shoulder to finish strong. Following the Larry David model, we need to win a Spite Super Bowl this year.

 

[Newbian Princess]

I agree. The videos are fun. But it also a bit of a privacy violation as well. It’s only a matter of time before one of those videos become X rated

Who do you think is forking in the saints locker room?

 

[whiteshadowen]

I think the owners ought to sue. NFL has no right to mandate masks and issue fines and forfeits based on that. They won't, but they ought too.

 

[rail]

Anger Angry Grumblings OUTRAGE!!!

 

[RebSaint]

I AM TEH MAAAD!!!!!

 

[BoNcHiE]

Meh, whatever.

 

[Saintsphere]

On one level, the punishment seems warranted--for the team's failure to prevent the release of this type of video. I am less bothered by the postgame celebration than the stupidity in taking the video and releasing it. The responsible players should pay the fine. And if the team did not have a strong policy against recording and taking video of team activities, it hopefully has one in place now. Get those cell phones out of the team facilities and locker rooms.

The team and players have posted those videos for years now. It’s part of the team’s culture that they love and WANT fans to celebrate in.

Why is it now a problem? The players made a gaffe and were careless with not wearing masks, probably because they thought game day was when the mask rules were the most relaxed. But to be mad all of a sudden that we post the videos when we’ve been doing it for 3 years now is silly IMO. Live and learn.

It’s not like the players post videos of Payton’s message to the team after games like AB once did with Tomlin. Let’s not overthink dancing in the locker room = suddenly a bad thing our team does that players should keep to themselves.

 

[blackadder]

Apart from the silliness of requiring masks INDOORS in a tight locker room but allowing the players to tackle and scrum and essentially play Twister with each other on the field without masks, plus the inconsistency of punishment (again singling out the Saints), this makes me worry more that we will be officiated differently in the playoffs and the league biases will kick in again.

We will have to be perfect, overwhelming AND lucky to get to a Super Bowl.

 

[Saintsphere]

The fine is steep and losing a draft pick sucks but...could be worse I guess. Is the NFL hypocritical? Yes. Is losing a 7th round pick and Gayle losing half a million the end of the world? Not really.

Take it as a begrudgingly lesson learned and move on. With this, and the covid cases rising, Payton and the players need to be as anal about these protocols as ever before. We shouldn’t even come close to tempting the NFL to punish us again about anything covid related.

And as always to put things in perspective, the NFL is all but darn near gifting us a win today by having our opponent play a game without a QB (and the NFL will STILL likely punish the Broncos in the coming weeks with a fine or draft pick forfeiture), so I’m not going to waste my energy getting mad at them about this.

 

[UFCSaint]

I say that the team wears these in the locker room today.

 

[saintfan1972]

The pressure is on us today. If we win, we were supposed to because the Broncos dont have a QB. If we lose, we are the laughingstock of the league today.