The San Francisco 49ers made waves earlier this week when backup running back Jordan Mason said he knew he would start since the previous Friday, despite the 49ers officially classifying Christian McCaffrey as questionable as late as Monday.
Kyle Shanahan, head coach of the 49ers, clarified that Jordan Mason was not told he would start on Friday, but rather that he would likely have a larger role than his usual sideline presence.
Regardless, many have called for the NFL to investigate and sanction San Francisco for cheating: by leaving the door open for a significant player to participate, the Niners allegedly generated unnecessary additional labour and confusion for the opposition New York Jets until the eleventh hour.
Despite the league’s claim that they did not intend to investigate the topic, it appears that the NFL conducted an informal, internal check and publicized their findings, according Ian Rapaport.
The San Francisco 49ers were cleared of wrongdoing by the NFL.
The first difficulty may be the length of the “investigation” or “looking into”. Granted, it is not a serious, next-level infraction, but it does feel like manipulating the injury report to intentionally classify a player as questionable knowing he will almost certainly not play; this is why we have injury classifications in the first place.
This is similar to what happened last season, when Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow broke his wrist against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 11. It was later revealed that the Bengals quarterback had a chronic ailment previous to the game that had not been mentioned, causing fury in the gambling community, with many demanding refunds for bets placed on Cincinnati without prior knowledge.
Cincy was absolved of wrongdoing once more, but it appears that the issue has been brought to the forefront, and the NFL will have to deal with it sooner or later.
Are the Green Bay Packers copying the 49ers’ risky strategy?
In a stunning move, the Packers are designating starting quarterback Jordan Love, who briefly became the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, as “questionable” despite suffering a damaged MCL at the end of their Week 1 game against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The return time for this is typically 3-6 weeks; while Green Bay has been confident from the start that Love’s recovery time will be on the shorter end of that spectrum, coming back after an MCL sprain in just over a week is almost unheard of, and it is a risky move to pull for only the second game of a long regular season.
Especially this year, when the Packers are considered real NFC contenders. Now, either the six-time Lombardi Trophy winners are quite confident in their medical staff’s ability to prepare Love for their Week 2 game against the Indianapolis Colts, or this is another Niners-style injury report smokescreen designed to confound the Colts.
Will doing so result in disciplinary action if it turns out later that the Packers had no intention of playing Love? Potentially, but it’s also possible that the fifth-year man is recovering at an inhumane rate, or that the injury is much less severe than first assumed.
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