Fires burn across the NFL map. Yesterday, the league dispatched two vice presidents to put out a growing blaze in Pittsburgh, and another one popped up in Baltimore.

Ray Anderson, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, met with Steelers coach Mike Tomlin, his captains and Troy Polamalu to try to ease their concerns about recent comments players have made about the league.

Anderson emerged from that and revealed the NFL is investigating comments made by Baltimore's Terrell Suggs that the Ravens had a "bounty" on Steelers Rashard Mendenhall and Hines Ward.

"We certainly are looking into it," Anderson said. "That bounty notion is completely against the rule and to the extent that if someone is engaged in that activity, we will look into it aggressively."

Suggs agreed recently with a syndicated sports radio talk-show host who asked if the Ravens had a bounty on Mendenhall, the Steelers' rookie halfback who was knocked out for the season when Ray Lewis tackled him and broke his shoulder Sept. 29 in Heinz Field.

"The bounty was out on him and the bounty was out on 86 [Ward]. We just didn't get him between the whistles," Suggs said.

Anderson said the league is "trying to determine the completeness of the circumstances. So, yes, we will look into, and, if it is determined in fact that it was bounty verified, there will certainly be accountability."

Lewis mentioned nothing about a bounty but he did relish ending Mendenhall's season, according to Sports Illustrated's Dan Patrick in his column in the Oct. 20 issue.

"The force was freaking incredible," Patrick quotes Lewis about the tackle. "After the play, I wasn't screaming, 'He's hurt.' I was screaming, 'He's done.' "

Ward shrugged off Suggs' remarks.

"I've been having a bounty for five years now," Ward said. "But they're looking into it. I'll let them handle that; there's nothing I can do about that.

"The league is concerned because you don't want that in the game. This is not the NFL -- any gang-related and get-back for any wars or things like that."

The reaction to Suggs' call for a bounty was muted in the Steelers' locker room. Coach Mike Tomlin told his players not to address it.

"I was told to say no comment, so no comment," said tackle Willie Colon.

Perhaps, the last thing Tomlin wanted was another distraction before the Steelers play the defending Super Bowl champion New York Giants Sunday. It's one reason he had only five players meet with Anderson and Ron Hill, the NFL vice president of football operations, yesterday.

"I think that is the start to laying this thing to bed and moving on and focusing on what we should focus on -- playing football games," Tomlin said. "This week, we have the New York Giants."

Ward said it is the first time in his 11 NFL seasons that someone from the league has paid his team a visit for such purposes.

"Never where the league has some reps come down and talk about the fines and also what's excessive play," said Ward, one of the team's four captains.

"We're going to put it behind us. They told us their side, we told them our side. There's a better understanding and we're going to move on from there."

Ward has been fined twice, a total of $15,000, over two games for "unnecessary roughness," even though no penalties were called against him in either game. He still seemed confused about what he did to prompt them. Polamalu then talked about the NFL becoming a "pansy" league and said he thought it was more over money than safety issues.

"Our discussion with Troy wasn't whether or not it was a pansy league or not," Anderson said. "We wanted him to understand that our interests and emphasis on player safety was genuine, was sincere and it wasn't driven by money or the economics. It wasn't driven by just trying to protect the star players. It was legitimately about player safety."

Anderson said it's not unusual for players to be fined, even though they went unpenalized during the game.

"We had 139 fines assessed through last week's games. I believe 77 of those were uncalled fouls, to your point that not all fines are on fouls that are actually flagged."