"The NFL's a production business," Williams said. "We'll never forget about it." The coach's momentum built. "Kill the head and the body will die," he said. He repeated it for emphasis. "Kill the head and the body will die." He continued: "We've got to do everything in the world to make sure we kill Frank Gore's head. We want him running sideways. We want his head sideways." He talked about taking the backup running back out of the game. He talked about taking the crowd out of the game. He reminded the players that this is a great game but that it's "a production business." He went over some situation-specifics.

Then Williams got to 49ers quarterback Alex Smith."On a two-man route," he said, pausing for a moment and pointing at his own chin route, "we hit fucking Smith right there. Remember me." Then he rubbed his fingers together—like what you might do while not saying the word money. "I got the first one. I got the first one," he said. "Go get it. Go lay that motherfucker out."

Maybe some of it was metaphorical, Pamphilon thought. But still, this was after so many stories about the devastating long-term effect of football concussions. After Chris Henry jumped—or fell—from the back of a pickup truck and doctors discovered that his twenty-six-year-old brain looked like an Alzheimer's patient's. After Dave Duerson shot himself in the chest, preserving his brain for concussion research. This was after the league had supposedly changed its tone and begun to crack down against hits to the head. Pamphilon felt disgusted. For the first time in the months he'd been shooting around the Saints, he felt very uncomfortable. He felt a little scared.

The coach went on with some more about the specifics of the game plan, but he always came back to the same point: "Kill the fucking head," he repeated over and over. "Every single one of you, before you get off the pile, affect the head. Early, affect the head. Continue to touch and hit the head. "

He reminded the team to never show weakness. He handed out cash awards—$200 each—for various defensive plays. The first two envelopes went out to players for what a jovial Williams called "whacks"—as in "whack hits." Pamphilon had never heard the term, and it has since been debated publicly, but it's safe to say a "whack" is an extra-hard hit. They are the kinds of hits coaches tell their players plant seeds of doubt in the minds of their opponents.

For the first time all meeting, both Fujita and Gleason were seen smiling on the video. Most of the players in the room laughed, and each time, in unison, they encouraged one another to "give it back"—meaning back into the overall prize pot, so the cash awards next time would be even bigger. The winners complied. Then the coach reminded the players to target specific injuries on 49ers: "We need to find out in the first two series of the game," Williams said, "that little wide receiver, number 10, about his concussion. We need to fucking put a lick on him, right now." On star receiver Michael Crabtree's knee: "He becomes human when we fucking take out that outside ACL." He added: "We need to decide on how many times we can beat Frank Gore's head."

Then he told his players to "never apologize for the way we compete," and the meeting ended with an inspirational DVD.

···

Pamphilon wasn't sure what to do with the video. He knew Steve Gleason wouldn't want to do anything that might hurt the Saints organization in any way, and Pamphilon didn't want to betray Gleason. There's no way of knowing if the mere existence of such a video—the Saints knew Pamphilon was filming that night—may have influenced the league's decision to go public, but on March 2 the NFL announced that, based on a two-year investigation, the league would be punishing the Saints for a "bounty program" and later that Williams was suspended from the league indefinitely. Pamphilon approached Gleason and talked about making the tape public. But Gleason didn't want to. Pamphilon knew that if he released the tape anonymously, eventually people would realize it was him anyway—and he certainly wasn't looking to get into a public spat with a dying football hero.