As expected, the Seattle Seahawks received a slap on the wrist from the NFL office for mishandling their weekly injury report last season. Rather than taking away a draft pick from the Seahawks, the NFL resorted to little more than issuing a warning to the team.
Richard Sherman’s knee injury was never reported by the Seahawks at any point last season despite Sherman missing practice time at various points in the season. Instead, the Seahawks tended to list him as absent from practices for “non-injury related” issues. Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll later said at the end of the season for the team that Sherman was in fact dealing with “a significant knee injury” during the second half of the season. Still, it was not reported by the team.
This goes against the NFL’s rules on reporting injuries.
“If any player has a significant or noteworthy injury, it must be listed on the practice report, even if he fully participates in practice and the team expects that he will play in the team’s next game,” the NFL rulebook states, according to ESPN.
The Seahawks got off relatively easy this time, which will be good news for Sherman considering some of his previous statements, but the NFL will be keeping close tabs on the future injury reports coming out of Seattle.
Should Seattle be punished more severely for this infraction of the injury report protocol, or is there nothing wrong with hiding key information about key players from the opponent? Also, how often do teams hide injury information from the injury report without getting caught?
[ESPN]
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About Kevin McGuire
Contributor to Athlon Sports and The Comeback. Previously contributed to NBCSports.com. Host of the Locked On Nittany Lions Podcast. FWAA member and Philadelphia-area resident.