
Tim Brown chuckled a bit. The former Raiders receiver and three-time Hall of Fame finalist was asked his opinion of the Bounty controversy surrounding the New Orleans Saints."My answer," Brown said after stifling his laugh, "may surprise you a little bit because, I don't want to say that it's part of the game but I think it was sort of done a different way back in the day. If you got a guy out the game, that was a big deal."Maybe (the Saints) just took it too far."Brown, in town for the Raiders' Commitment to Excellence Award dinner at the Oakland Airport Hilton honoring recipient Rock Cartwright, spoke of the sport's nature in explaining his feelings."Football is a dirty, hard game," he said. "I mean, it's a hard game; it shouldn't be a dirty game. And if they can show any plays that were dirty, illegal (by the Saints), then I think (critics) got a point. But if somebody hits somebody a little harder, it's still football.NEWS: Another contract restructured -- Curry the latest
"Look, there were times where I made deals with guys on the field -- 'Look, brother, if you want to save your knees, you better not take my head off when I come across the middle.' Some guys went for it, some guys didn't Rodney Harrison never went for itthat's just how the game was played."Brown also spoke of such plays that went down in his playing days."It's like what the Denver Broncos did to Chester McGlockton when they ruined his career here -- they took him out and it was dirty," Brown said. "There wasn't anything legal about what they were doing. It was illegal playsthey broke his ankle. They were diving on the back of his ankle."That kind of stuff, and what we cried about back then is, that needs to be punished. And they did, they got 50,000 fine. So what. The team probably paid it, Chester didn't play the next week, they came back here for a the playoff game, we still beat them but they didn't have to deal with Big Boy that week."You show me some dirty plays that New Orleans has and I'll tell you how bad they should be punished."So how fine is that line between being dirty and just playing hard?"That line is a lot thicker than you think," Brown said. "You can tell very quickly who is being dirty, and who is playing hard. Rodney Harrison was not a dirty player. He was just a dog. He was a dog, and you knew if he got his hands on you he was going to slam you to the ground. That's not dirty, that's part of the game. There's nothing illegal about thatit is now. You can't slam now. Rodney would have been out the league a long time ago if he played now."Brown said, though, that former longtime Kansas City cornerback Dale Carter was in the other category."He'd say, 'I almost got you,' like he was trying to take you knees out," Brown claimed.
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