The San Francisco 49ers made big headlines earlier this week, when backup running back, Jordan Mason, claimed that he had known he would start since the Friday before, despite the 49ers officially listing Christian McCaffrey as merely questionable as late as Monday.
Jordan Mason Supposedly Knew He Was Going To Start 3 Days Prior To Monday Night’s Game
49ers head coach, Kyle Shanahan aimed to clarify Mason’s comments the following day, asserting that he did not tell the backup he would be starting on Friday, only that he would likely have an expanded role compared to his normal sideline-heavy status.
Regardless, many have called for the NFL to investigate and fine San Francisco for cheating: by leaving the door open for a major player to be playing, the Niners unlawfully allegedly created needless additional work and confusion for the opposing New York Jets, all the way until the 11th hour.
Although the league claimed that they did not plan on investigating the matter, it seems that the NFL did do some form of informal, internal check, and have released their findings, per Ian Rapaport.
Per the NFL: “We looked into the 49ers’ reporting of the playing status of Christian McCaffrey for the team’s Monday night game against the New York Jets. We have found no evidence of a violation of the league’s Injury Report Policy in this matter.”
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) September 13, 2024
San Francisco 49ers Cleared Of Wrongdoing By NFL
The first issue may be the length of the “investigation”, or indeed the “looking into”. Granted, it is not some major, next level violation, but it does feel like abusing the injury report to deliberately list a player as questionable knowing he will almost certainly not play; hence why we have the injury designations in the first place.
This is reminiscent of a similar occurrence last season, where Cincinnati Bengals quarterback, Joe Burrow, broke his wrist in Week 11 against the Baltimore Ravens. It then turned out that the Bengals QB already had a lingering injury prior to the game that was not reported, prompting outrage from the gambling community, many of whom demanded refunds for bets placed on Cincinnati without this prior knowledge.
Once again, Cincy was cleared of wrongdoing, but at this point it does feel like the spotlight has been shone on the issue, and sooner or later the NFL will need to deal with this ongoing problem.
Are The Green Bay Packers Copying The 49ers’ Risky Strategy?
In what is a very surprising move, the Packers are listing starting quarterback, Jordan Love, who for a short time became the highest paid QB in the NFL, as “Questionable”, despite suffering a sprained MCL at the end of their Week 1 matchup against the Philadelphia Eagles.
The return time for this is normally regarded to be 3-6 weeks; whilst Green Bay has been confident from the outset that Love’s recovery time will be on the shorter end of that spectrum, just over a week to come back after an MCL sprain is almost unheard of, and a very risky move to pull for just the second game of a long regular season.
Especially in a year where the Packers are considered to be legitimate contenders in the NFC. Now, either the 6 x Lombardi Trophy winners are supremely confident in their medical staff’s ability to get Love ready for their matchup against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 2, or this is another Niners-esque injury report smokescreen, intended to confuse the Colts.
Will doing so lead to disciplinary action if it comes out later that the Packers really did have no intention of playing Love? Potentially, but it could be that the 5th year man is making some inhuman level recovery, or the injury is substantially less severe than initially thought.
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