The NFL ramped up its focus on apparent fake injuries this weekend.
The league levied huge fines on the New Orleans Saints following an incident on Monday Night Football. On Saturday, the league fined the team, head coach Dennis Allen, All-Pro defensive end Cameron Jordan, and co-defensive coordinator Ryan Nielsen. They accused Jordan of faking an ankle injury during the Saints’ game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Monday.
On Saturday, the NFL also hit another defensive star and his team with a similar accusation Saturday. This time, they took aim at the Cincinnati Bengals and All-Pro safety Jessie Bates.
Bates and the Bengals were fined $50,000 by the NFL, according to Mike Florio of ProFootballTalk. Florio wrote, “The Bengals and safety Jessie Bates have been $50,000 fined, too, for Bates cartoonishly falling to the ground as the Bengals were trying to get substitutes into last Sunday’s game against the Chiefs, per multiple sources.”
In the defense of the NFL, Bates’ “injury” was a pretty blatant fake. “Cartoonishly” is a good adverb to describe it. So, point to Florio for that one there.
Bates (seen above in an October game) is the fifth player, and the Bengals are the fifth team to be fined this season for faking an injury, according to PFT. So the league has a point of emphasis now, and it seems they are going to key in.
The other three teams, besides the Bengals and Saints on Saturday, and players, besides Bates and Jordan, were not cited in the PFT report.
[Pro Football Talk; photo from Kareem Elgazzar/USA Today Sports]
About Chris Novak
Chris Novak has been talking and writing about sports ever since he can remember. Previously, Novak wrote for and managed sites in the SB Nation network for nearly a decade from 2013-2022