The Baltimore Ravens were fined $20,000 by the NFL for not listing Ed Reed on their injury report. Don't be surprised if Ravens coach John Harbaugh is fined himself.
"There's no credence on the injury report now," Harbaugh said Friday, via The Baltimore Sun. "It doesn't mean anything. It has no value. The injury report has no value."
The Ravens listed just a handful of players on their injury report until the team was fined. The Ravens listed 16 players this week. The Cleveland Browns listed 19.
This is the New England Patriots' approach to the injury report: List everyone as questionable and effectively obscure which players are seriously hurt.
"If a guy that goes out there and doesn't miss a practice and doesn't miss a game and doesn't want to be on the injury report and we have to put him on the injury report, I want the league's answer on that," Harbaugh said. "I'm looking forward to hearing that."
The NFL had no comment on Harbaugh's remarks.
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By rule, a team has to list players who have significant injuries even if they take every practice snap. This is "especially true of key players and those players whose injuries have been covered extensively by the media," according to the rules. Harbaugh took issue with that aspect as well.
"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," Harbaugh said. "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."
The injury report is a necessary evil, but we can't really argue with the substance of many of the points that Harbaugh makes. A lot of teams play around with the injury report, and we've often questioned its overall value.
