Joe Vitt to meet Saints at airport

• Recommend0
• Tweet0
• Comments0
• Email
• Print

New Orleans Saints interim head coach Joe Vitt, whose six-game suspension expired after Sunday's 35-28 win against the Buccaneers, will be at the airport in Tampa to greet the team when it arrives to fly back to New Orleans.

To say Vitt has been awaiting this day would be an understatement. His suspension marked the first time in 44 years he has not coached football.

"I missed these guys so bad," he said this weekend.

Being away from the game was as difficult as anything Vitt has had to endure during his coaching career and he will be diving right back into his work.

Vitt flew to Tampa on Sunday morning, and he plans to go to his office in New Orleans on Sunday night. 

And Vitt is hardly the only Saints head coach in the headlines. Suspended head coach Sean Payton watched Sunday's game versus the Buccaneers at Manning's Restaurant in New Orleans with 100 fans who paid $1,000 a head, with $100,000-plus going to Payton's Play it Forward Foundation, which will distribute the monies to organizations that work with families and children in need.

Meanwhile, if former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue delivers a ruling significantly different from commissioner Roger Goodell's when he hears the appeals of players suspended as a result of the NFL's bounty investigation, many league sources told ESPN senior NFL analyst Chris Mortensen that they believe Saints owner Tom Benson will petition Goodell to reconsider Payton's one-year suspension.

• Recommend0
• Tweet0
• Comments0
• Email
• Print
• Subscribe

Adam Schefter

NFL

• Follow
• Archive

• ESPN NFL Insider
• Joined ESPN in 2009
• Former president of the Pro Football Writers of America and the author of four books