Seattle Seahawks head coach Pete Carroll revealed Monday his star cornerback, Richard Sherman, played through a knee injury for a good part of this season.
That’s news to pretty much anyone outside the Seattle organization, despite the fact the NFL has something in place to make sure injury news is shared, at least to an extent: the weekly injury report.
However, when Carroll went on a Seattle radio show and admitted to Sherman’s MCL injury, he implicated himself in violating the NFL’s injury report policy. Carroll claimed at a season-ending news conference Monday the whole thing was just a big mix-up.
“I didn’t realize that we hadn’t even revealed it,” he told reporters, per ProFootballTalk.com. “I don’t even remember what game it was, it was somewhere in the middle, he was fine about it, he didn’t miss anything. Same with Russell (Wilson), he was fine about it. I don’t know how they do that, but they did.”
Hmm.
Even though Sherman never missed time, the Seahawks are supposed to report the injury. And comparing the situation to Wilson doesn’t really hold up because as USA TODAY points out, the Seahawks did place Wilson on the injury report with a pectoral injury. Same with Wilson’s nagging knee injury earlier in the season. Not only that, according to USA TODAY, Sherman missed practices over the last two months of the season, but Seattle labeled him with the NIR (not injury-related) designation.
“I’m feeling like I screwed up with not telling you that,” Carroll admitted in reference to Sherman’s injury. “He was OK, so I don’t know, he never missed anything I guess is probably why.”
Regardless, it still sounds like a violation of the rule, and that could be costly. The NFL, as USA TODAY also notes, fined the Jets $125,000 for not reporting Brett Favre’s arm injury during the 2008 season.
This isn’t the first instance of shady business with the Seahawks. Seattle committed multiple offseason workout rules violations in previous offseasons.
Thumbnail photo via Chuck Cook/USA TODAY Sports Images
