It’s no secret that football during COVID-19, particularly in 2020 and 2021, was a complete mess.
Players and coaches were being threatened with their jobs if they didn’t get the vaccine, and games were having to be rescheduled due to outbreaks within teams. And of course there was the whole Aaron Rodgers “immunized” debacle that the media had a field day with even though the Packers knew from the very beginning that Rodgers was never vaccinated.
They didn’t seem to care, but Terry Bradshaw and the rest of the media sure did…
And on top of all of it, the CDC later confirmed that the vaccines did nothing to stop transmission of the disease, nor did cloth masks have a strong ability to prevent transmission, especially in a community setting like a football facility. I mean, where’s the logic in not wearing one in the locker room, the gym, the team facility or on the team plane, but then making sure you have one on during a game on the sideline… outdoors?
It truly was one of the weirdest time periods of our lifetime.
During that time period, teams, players, and NFL coaches were given fines if they were seen on the sidelines not wearing their masks properly, or not wearing them at all.
We saw this situation go down during the 2020 game between the New Orleans Saints and Las Vegas Raiders.
Both head coaches, Sean Payton of the Saints and Jon Gruden of the Raiders, violated the league’s mask policy at the time, mostly wearing them under their chins, if at all.
According to ESPN, both were hit with $100,000 fines for not wearing their masks on the sidelines.
Gruden reportedly appealed the fine, but was denied and paid the $100K.
However, Payton didn’t touch it…
In fact, he didn’t pay any part of the fine.
According to a new report regarding Jon Gruden’s email leak (and how it took down former Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder) Payton made a joke out of it, and hilariously told Gruden to his face:
“I never paid the fine. You’re the only dumb f*ck that paid the fine.”
Of course, we don’t know if Payton was since forced to pay the fine, but at the time he wasn’t having it with the new policy that the NFL was incorporating during the strangest time of our lives.
It appears we could be getting more of these Sean Payton comments, as he’s returned to coaching, taking the Denver Broncos head coaching job after announcing his retirement back in 2021.
Meanwhile, Gruden has vowed to “burn the NFL’s house down” regarding his removal from the league:
