League demands an end to threats

Vow to retaliate for Sapp hit prompts NFL to promise severe penalties.

By RICK STROUD, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published November 27, 2002

TAMPA -- The NFL warned the Bucs and Packers against spilling another drop of bad blood Tuesday.

The league informed both teams that coaches who comment publicly about retaliation against players will face hefty fines and suspension.

The warning was delivered in a tersely worded memo from NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue to coaches Mike Sherman and Jon Gruden.

It resulted from threats made in a telephone call Monday by Green Bay offensive line coach Larry Beightol to Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin regarding the hit by Warren Sapp on Packers offensive tackle Chad Clifton on Sunday.

The league ruled Monday that the block was legal. It came during an interception return by Brian Kelly in the Bucs' 21-7 win.

But Beightol told Kiffin Monday that Sapp would be cut-blocked the next time the teams meet.

Clifton was released from Memorial Hospital in Tampa on Tuesday and returned to Green Bay, where he remains hospitalized with a severe hip injury that likely will end his season.

The Bucs own the best record in football at 9-2. The Packers are 8-3, meaning the teams could meet in the playoffs.

Tagliabue said the league would closely monitor developments regarding the incident.

"Please make certain from today and going forward there is no further public criticism of the opposing team, players or coaches, or other public comments or threats of injury or retaliation related to these matters," Tagliabue said in the memo. "Please also understand and advise your staff that any such criticism or conduct will constitute conduct detrimental to the league or professional football, and will be the subject of very substantial fines or other disciplinary action, including potential suspension of assistant coaches."

Kiffin told the Times Monday that Beightol threatened to have Packers offensive lineman chop block Sapp. "If (Beightol) wants to come after Sapp, I know one thing: chop-blocking is illegal. We'll be ready for it."

Sherman confronted Sapp about the hit after the game, and the defensive tackle had to be restrained. But it was Beightol's comments that drew a severe reaction from the league.

"If we play them again, he's fair game," Beightol told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal. "Somewhere, we'll see him. There will be other games. There will be other times. Like the saying goes, every dog has his day. We'll see about him."

"If you're trying to tell me that Larry Beightol or whoever is running off at the mouth in Green Bay, they always talk when they're 3,000 miles away, don't they?" Sapp said at his weekly radio show from Best Buy in Citrus Park that aired on WQYK-AM 1010. "That's the funny thing about it. They're a long way away, they're not on the schedule anymore like they used to be. I don't think I did anything that any other person wouldn't have done.

"I've always been a marked man in this league. The only thing you have to do is ask any offensive line coach or any offensive lineman I have faced. What they do is assign two people to me. I don't have a problem with that. So what are they going to do now? Put three people on me?"

Sapp said Sherman was trying to goad him into a physical altercation Sunday.

"He was stepping into a realm he really didn't want to go. I think he was trying to bait me into making something physical of it. I replayed it 1,000 times in my head. I did it the right way. I let (Sherman) know we're not going to back down.

"Call me a lot of things. Don't call me stupid because for me to take a cheap shot at somebody, that would be stupid because I'll have two or three people around me at any given time. And the rule used to be if you're not blocking anybody, just go find Sapp and you'll never be wrong."

Sapp said that he was sorry Clifton was injured and that he was celebrating the interception, not the block that left the tackle with numbness in his feet and hands.

"I wasn't standing above him. I never stood above anyone," Sapp said. "You know I don't want this man in the hospital. He's the second player in my career when I wished the man would've gotten up and walked off. Out of 8,000 plays, that ain't bad."

Sapp said the incident has detracted from Sunday's big win.

"I was at home last night and for the first time, we're 9-2 and I didn't feel like I could celebrate it," Sapp said.

-- Times staff writer Roger Mills contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.