Tags full report

Final decision on appeal

About the coaches and draft picks:
"These suspensions thus deprived the Saints of vitally important coaching and leadership talent, and they represented a severe competitive penalty for the Saints’ team, its fans and indirectly for the New Orleans / Gulf Coast region. Commissioner Goodell’s findings and the resulting suspensions of these Saints’ personnel are final and no longer subject to appeal."

I like these gems:
"That investigation was obstructed in multiple ways by the Saints’ head coach, senior coaches and other team officials, including their instructing Hargrove to answer questions falsely, though it remains unclear what exactly Hargrove was asked by investigators regarding the Program."

"As a further complication, it is unclear exactly what NFL investigators asked Hargrove regarding the Program or any other alleged program and,thus, unclear whether he lied about the Program or the fact that it included cart-offs and knockouts."

So the NFL didn't know what it asked Hargrove, but that didn't matter, as NFL said his answers were lies, and the Saints told him to lie in response to said unknown questions. Good thing for Hargrove that Tags got involved, and he has to wonder if he might not have been cut but for the initial suspension.

More:

"This sad chapter in the otherwise praiseworthy history of the New Orleans Saints casts no executive, coach or player in a favorable light."

"As Coach Williams put it, the strategy was to “deny, deny, deny” (New Orleans Saints Article 46 Appeal Proceedings Hr’g Tr. 1105:5-11), possibly in part to avoid tarnishing what everyone saw as an incredibly important and well-earned Saints Super Bowl victory."

"Due to the indefensible obstruction of justice by Saints’ personnel, which included admitted efforts of coaches to mislead or otherwise deny the existence of a bounty or the Program, a disciplinary process that should have taken weeks is verging on three years."

Finally, on the bounty, Tags seems to be an instant replay ref needing indisputable evidence to overturn Goodell's finding:

"Evaluating the totality of the evidence, there is an insufficient basis to reject Commissioner Goodell’s findings on the offer of the Favre bounty."

But the alleged offer was enough because:

"There was no evidence that Vilma or anyone else paid any money to any player for any bounty-related hit on an opposing player in the Vikings game."