It’s been over 10 years since Bountygate surfaced, but NFL fans probably remember it like it was yesterday. The scandal which put the New Orleans Saints in the spotlight was based around the idea that defensive players would get paid additional “bonuses” if they managed to hurt certain players on the opposing team.

Targeted players included Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, Aaron Rodgers, Cam Newton, and more. It was reported that defensive captain Jonathan Vilma offered $10,000 for anyone that was able to knock Favre out of the game.

Obviously there are 1,000 things wrong with this, and it led to multiple year-long suspensions and fines all over the place. More recently, comments made by James Harrison has kicked up dust in the Pittsburgh Steelers camp.

Reportedly, Harrison revealed that Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin “handed him the envelope” after Harrison was fined $75,000 for a hit on Cincinnati Bengals receiver Mohamed Massaquoi. You likely don’t need to have this explained to you, but people interpreted it as a bounty-like situation rather than as compensation.

On Friday, Harrison took to Instagram to post a fiery rant calling out reports that Tomlin had conducted wrongdoing.

 

 

 

Wow y'all really comparing what I said to BOUNTYGATE?!? Mike T. Has NEVER paid me for hurting someone or TRYING to hurt someone or put a bounty on ANYBODY! If you knew the full story of what happened back then you'd know that BS fine for a Legal Play wasn't even penalized during the game. The league was getting pressure because the first concussion lawsuits were starting and they had to look like they cared about player safety all of a sudden. Before that they had been SELLING a photo of THAT SAME PLAY FOR $55 on the NFL website with other videos of the NFL'S GREATEST HITS that the league Profited On back then. When the league had to start pretending like they cared about player safety they took all those things down off their website and they started fining guys ridiculous amounts for the same plays they used to profit off of. EVERYBODY knew it - even these same media people and all the fans that were sending money to me and the team to cover the fine. AGAIN AT NO TIME did Mike T. EVER suggest anybody hurt anybody or that they'd be rewarded for anything like that. GTFOH with that BS!!! #receipts

A post shared by James Harrison (@jhharrison92) on

 

On top of this, Harrison’s agent strongly denied that the former star even said that.

 

We may or may not know the whole story, but Harrison certainly isn’t trying to get Tomlin in trouble. The conversation also may start to become whether it would be wrong for the team to cover a fine if, in fact, it was a picture that the NFL was profiting off of.

This conversation may not be over quite yet.