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In 2012, the NFL was rocked by the scandal known as “Bountygate” thanks to the Saints, but they may not have been the only team that was trying to injure players on purpose based on what former defensive lineman John Abraham recently had to say about a directive that’s led to ex-Buccaneers tackle Donald Penn pushing back against his claims.
Injuries are a virtually unavoidable work hazard if you make a living as an NFL player (or a professional athlete in general). Teams can obviously gain a big advantage if key opponents are forced to sit on the sideline, but actively attempting to hurt someone is a strategy that’s obviously frowned upon.
In 2012, the NFL brought the hammer down on the New Orleans Saints over the institutionally sanctioned rewards system at the center of “Bountygate,” which led to the coaches who oversaw it getting hit with suspensions while the franchise was forced to pay a $500,000 fine and forfeit two second-round draft picks.
Other teams subsequently had some major incentive to not get caught deploying a similarly dirty approach to football, but during a recent interview on The Water Boyz Show, former Falcons DT John Abraham claimed Tampa Bay OT Donald Penn told him the Buccaneers had been instructed to target Atlanta players prior to their last regular season game in 2012.
That’s obviously a fairly explosive accusation to float even if it took more than a decade to surface, but according to JoeBucsFan, Penn has firmly pushed back against Abraham’s “completely ridiculous” account, saying “dirty play was never even implied in Bucs’ player meetings with coaches” and adding “his teammates wouldn’t have gone along with it and certainly he never would have told Abraham about it” if that had in fact been the case.
As things currently stand, this is a textbook “He Said, He Said” Situation; Penn and other members of the Falcons don’t really have any incentive to admit they were directed to injure players if that was the case, but it’s also a bit hard to believe Abraham would simply make it up for attention.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone else who may have been privy to Tampa Bay’s game plan decides to chime in.