Bear Digest

Ravens' cavalier approach to Bears game injury report requires penalty

Analysis: Baltimore's failure to accurately portrayal of Lamar Jackson's status for Friday's practice needs to be taken seriously by the NFL.
Gene Chamberlain|
Football fans need to wait another week before they'll see Lamar Jackson play, that is, provided the injury report saying Jackson is out Sunday against the Bears is correct. It's difficult to be certain.
Football fans need to wait another week before they'll see Lamar Jackson play, that is, provided the injury report saying Jackson is out Sunday against the Bears is correct. It's difficult to be certain. | Junfu Han / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

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Chicago Bears

In a reverse manner, the Lamar Jackson injury situation is starting to sound familiar for longtime Bears fans.

In 2010, on the night the Bears clinched the NFC North at Minneapolis and ended Brett Favre's career, the Vikings took liberties with the NFL's injury report. Brett Favre was reported out earlier, then upgraded to doubtful, and they eventually went from doubtful to starting. The protocol is questionable for 50-50, and then he starts. Doubtful is not going to result in a start. It did that night.

None of it mattered after defensive end Corey Wootton knocked Favre out in what proved to be his final game.

Bears coach Lovie Smith wasn't too happy about it even after the win when asked about it after clinching the title. The NFL stood up for the Vikings afterward, but they all knew it was so much garbage. No one got in trouble.

Injury status is to be taken seriously. They shouldn't play games with it, and even now it seems the Baltimore Ravens don't understand this.

The Ravens had to correct their Friday injury report on Saturday after they had reported Lamar Jackson had a full practice on Friday and was questionable. They had to downgrade his status on the Friday report a day late to limited and then report Saturday he was out for Sunday's game.

Kind of conveniently late on that one when the last Bears practice of the week was Friday.

“Lamar Jackson was present for and participated fully in our entire practice ahead of Sunday’s game against the Bears,” Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio reported the Ravens announced in a statement issued Saturday. “Upon further evaluation and after conferring with the league office, because Lamar didn’t take starter reps in practice, we updated our report to reflect his practice participation.”

The Baltimore statement makes it appear as if they weren't sure how this was to be reported and they needed to clarify it, when it's actually their job to know this and they fouled it up either mistakenly or intentionally.

It's very clear when a player should get limited status and full status. Florio pointed out how the policy says a player must take 100% of his "normal repetitions" before being listed for a full practice.

It looks like games are being played here by the Ravens. Would they even have said anything if Ian Rapoport hadn't had a sourced report saying Jackson practiced with the scout team?

Whether it was just carelessness or it wasn't, it shows how something needs to be done to penalize teams who fail to make accurate injury reports.

This can affect another team's preparation.

Not only that, but Florio points out the obvious link between injury reports and gamblers and this doesn't exactly reflect well on the NFL amid the current NBA gambling scandal. What the Ravens did looks shady.

The betting line changed by three points when the injury news got corrected.

Whoops.

Florio suggests the NFL review its policies.

They need to do much more than that. That's like putting it into the "circular file," the same way they did with the Favre situation 15 years ago.

What the NFL needs to do is start taking away draft picks from teams who violate the injury report policy.

Bill Belichick's injury reports used to be a total joke. He'd list practically everyone on the roster on them. Nosehair out of place, player is "questionable." Those reports were of absolutely no value to anyone.

The reports need to be honest reflections of a team's health status. It doesn't just irritate journalists who have reported one thing only to have it turn out to be false, or gamblers. It impacts preparation for the game by opponents and, in that sense, losing draft picks seems a proper fine.

They take away draft picks for tampering with free agents. Why not take them away for tampering with the injury report?

It would have been proper penalty 15 years ago on a night when the Bears won the division, just like it should be now.

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Gene Chamberlain
GENE CHAMBERLAIN

Gene Chamberlain has covered the Chicago Bears full time as a beat writer since 1994 and prior to this on a part-time basis for 10 years. He covered the Bears as a beat writer for Suburban Chicago Newspapers, the Daily Southtown, Copley News Service and has been a contributor for the Daily Herald, the Associated Press, Bear Report, CBS Sports.com and The Sporting News. He also has worked a prep sports writer for Tribune Newspapers and Sun-Times newspapers.