Another salacious story from the Brett Favre biography Gunslinger, another denial that it ever happened. First, there was Aaron Rodgers denying that he called Favre grandpa and now the Minnesota Vikings are denying that they had a bounty program that targeted other NFC North teams, including the Green Bay Packers.
The program reportedly was in place in 2008 and 2009, when Brad Childress was coach of the team. In the book, offensive lineman Artis Hicks is quoted as saying the Vikings had an incentive system to injure key players on their division foes.
The Vikings released a statement on Thursday saying there was no truth to the story. What else are they going to say?
Childress followed that up with his own denial.
“I had a great opportunity to coach a lot of great people there, including Artis Hicks, at the Minnesota Vikings,” Childress said, via ESPN.com. “I have too much respect for the Wilf family [and] professional football to have anything to do with a bounty system. I’m going to let it stand at that.”
A number of players who played on those teams have also denied Hicks’ account.
Are they trying to cover their own asses? Entirely possible, but you also have to question the veracity of this book now that more than one person supposedly involved with incidents depicted in it have denied those incidents have happened.
Either way, the Viking are, were and always will be a bunch of scumbag losers.