After receiving a $20,000 fine for not reporting an injury safety Ed Reed had, one would think the Baltimore Ravens would just go about complying with the injury report rules in any way.
Ravens head coach John Harbaugh apparently wasn’t very pleased with the fine and voiced some of his frustrations recently.
Per The Baltimore Sun: Harbaugh was quoted as saying, “There’s no credence on the injury report now. It doesn’t mean anything. It has no value. The injury report has no value.”
“I’ll go back to the significance thing. The way the thing is written, it says, ‘if a player has practiced fully or played fully and he has an injury and he is a significant player and it affects his play, then he should be on there.’ Well, I think player safety is important for all of the players. I’m going to say that every injury is significant,” Harbaugh said. “If that’s how they want to word it, I’m not going to go with the league saying that one player is more significant than another player. That’s absurd to me. They can get mad at me if they want for saying that, but they need to write that a little more clearly. We’ll just put every guy on there that has a hangnail and go from there.”
Like Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, Harbaugh says now he will report every little injury.
“Bill figured it out way before the rest of us did. His injury report is that long. It’s been that way for years,” Harbaugh said. “We tried to do it the other way and be straightforward with our injury report and we got fined for it. So we’re moving on.”
It could just be me, but I think somebody is a little upset.
I understand his frustration, but honestly the rules are the rules. If a player is injured, put it on the report. Save yourself the trouble and your team the money.
I’ll be interested to see what the league thinks of Harbaugh’s comments. There could be a nice fine headed his way.
