Although Gregg Williams’ indefinite suspension for the NFL is solely a result of running a bounty program with the Saints, multiple former players have said Williams put bounties on opposing players as defensive coordinator for the Redskins, too. And that has led to many questions about how much Williams’ Hall of Famer boss in Washington, Joe Gibbs, knew about it.
Gibbs says he knew nothing.
“Gregg Williams actually coached for me when I was at the Washington Redskins,” Gibbs said on Sirius XM NASCAR Radio, via Dan Steinberg of the Washington Post. “And my whole point on that was never, in my entire career of 40 years of coaching, did anybody, ever, bring up to me incentivizing someone to hurt somebody else or to take them out of a game. Never ever. And if that took place anywhere where I was, I certainly didn’t hear about it.”
Gibbs previously denied knowing about bounties when Williams was on his staff, but this denial goes even further than that: Gibbs says he never even heard of bounties during his 16 years as coach of the Redskins, his time as an assistant with the Cardinals, Buccaneers and Chargers, or his time as a college assistant before that.
What Gibbs has acknowledged is that in the 1980s he would sometimes give players money for “outstanding plays made within the rules of the game,” which he said was permitted in those pre-salary cap days. But Gibbs insists that he never knew of any incentives to hurt opposing players, from the start of his career in the 1960s, through the four years when he was Williams’s boss.
