The Facts: Following up on the ongoing story. ... There's plenty of blame to assign to plenty of figures involved in the Saints' embarrassing bounty scandal, and in due time an assortment of folks will end up paying in some way or another for their misdeeds. But most of all, I wouldn't want to be in Mickey Loomis' or Sean Payton's shoes today. If there are heads in danger of rolling over this shady chapter in New Orleans team history, they belong to Loomis, the club's longtime general manager, and Payton, the team's ultra-successful head coach.
Diehards Line:So wrote SI.com's Don Banks, before going on to explain that Loomis in particular might be on thin ice. The GM not only looks like the highest-ranking Saints official who knew what was going on with the team's widespread use of a bounty program -- did nothing about it; he also lied about it. Citing the NFL's internal investigation, Banks reports that Loomis decided to cover up the existence of the team's bounty program, first denying any knowledge of it to the league when the NFL looked into the allegations in 2010, and then promising to dismantle and discontinue such a program if he found such evidence. The league's report contains four very damning sentences regarding Loomis' response to the Saints' bounty fund: "When informed earlier this year of the new information, [Saints owner Tom] Benson advised league staff that he had directed his general manager, Mickey Loomis, to ensure that any bounty program be discontinued immediately. The evidence shows that Mr. Loomis did not carry out Mr. Benson's direction. Similarly, when the initial allegations where discussed with Mr. Loomis in 2010, he denied any knowledge of a bounty program and pledged that he would ensure that no such program was in place. There is no evidence that Mr. Loomis took any effective action to stop these practices. ...' In other words, Loomis looked the other way, and hoped the story would go away. It didn't. ... That's why Banks believes neither Loomis nor Payton are certain tgo survive this scandal. How they react to it could dictate whether they come out the other side with their jobs intact.