According to a report out of Tennessean (via the Detroit Free Press), Tennessee Titan players ran an incentive program for big hits while Lions head coach Jim Schwartz was the defensive coordinator there.
The report further states that Schwartz handed out boxing gloves and baseball bats for the big hits while the players raised the ante with monetary rewards.
“Guys would throw out there, ‘Hey, knock this guy out and it’s worth $1,000,’” safety Lance Schulters, who played for Tennessee from 2002-04, told the paper. “Let’s say when we played the Steelers, and Hines Ward was always trying to knock guys out. So if you knocked (him) out, there might be something in the pot, $100 or whatever, for a big hit on Hines — a legal, big hit.”
Birkett writes that Schwartz didn’t run a bounty program like what former Saints defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is being accused of. However it’s assumed the NFL would take some action if he knew about the players offering money to each other for the big hits and doing nothing about it.
Schwartz did work under Williams as a defensive assistant back in 1999 and 2000. Because of this connection we at The Majors Detroit speculated on what Schwartz knew Sunday.
Lions safety Chris Harris told the Free Press that player bounty programs are common in the NFL however didn’t provide any details.
“It goes on all around the league. I think it does,” he said. “I don’t know if every team does it, but I think it’s more common than most (believe).”
Harris and defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh maintain that no incentive program is in place with the Lions. However former Lions safety Ron Rice said a similar program was in place with the Lions between 1995-2001.
“You go out and say, ‘If you get an interception in this game,’ or, ‘I got $100 that I’ll get the interception,’” Rice said. “Or if you got a kick returner, he’ll pay the whole return team for every touchdown that he scores. Things like that. But that’s all internal things amongst players. Coaches were never involved in it.”
Rice said offering bounties to injure players is more isolated and was never a part of the programs he saw.
“We would never put a bounty on a guy’s head to injure a guy or take a guy off the field on a stretcher or anything like that,” Rice said. “It was more so money on an interception, money on a big play, making a stop or something like that. But for a team to go out and intentionally focus on hurting a player is totally unacceptable because again, it goes beyond a game. This is your job and this is your career and a lot of people, it’s your livelihood and this is how people earn their living, so it’s unacceptable.”
Ref: Detroit Free Press, Tennessean
