Jimmy Kennedy may have been told about the Saints' bounties
JIMMY KENNEDY: Kennedy, who was a high school All-American at Roosevelt High School in Yonkers, has played 10 seasons in the NFL and was a member of the Giants' Super Bowl XLVI championship team. (Sept. 11, 2011) Credit: Getty Images
Of course, somehow, Jimmy Kennedy is involved.
The defensive tackle who played for the Giants last year and got a Super Bowl ring for the effort (although he was also suspended for four games during the season and has yet to be re-signed) had his name pop up in relation to the NFL’s bounty investigation today. Not that he did anything wrong. But still, it’s never good to have your name associated with the investigation.
The Kennedy reference comes from the sworn statement of former Saints and current Packers defensive tackle Anthony Hargrove, which was obtained today by the Associated Press and Yahoo!Sports. According to Hargrove’s statement, he was called into a late February 2010 meeting with defensive coordinator Gregg Williams and associate head coach Joe Vitt. The coaches said they had heard Hargrove might have told Kennedy, then playing for the Vikings, that there had been a bounty on Brett Favre when the saints and Vikings played in the NFC title game. Hargrove and Kennedy were teammates with the Rams and friends.
Hargrove’s statement describes Williams as telling him to “play dumb” if anyone asked about the bounties. It also describes Williams as saying (in obscenity-laced terms, natch) that league officials "have been trying to get me for years," and "if we all stay on the same page, this will blow over." Vitt, according to the statement, reminds Hargrove of their past and how Vitt brought Hargrove to the saints after he was suspended by the NFL for drug abuse.
Hargrove's statement then says that in March 2010 he met with NFL investigators, who asked him a range of questions about a bounty program in New Orleans, and that he denied knowledge of any of it, in line with the "clear directions" he had received from Williams and Vitt.
Hargrove’s statement does not go into specifics about just what he knew or did not know about the bounty program in New Orleans. The NFL Players Association believes the statement does not say that Hargrove lied to anyone or even prove the existence of the bounty program. The league, of course, begs to differ.
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