It sounds like Tyreek Hill could be the center of an NFL investigation into whether or not his injury was properly reported in accordance with league policy.
head of Monday night’s showdown with the Los Angeles Rams, Tyreek Hill was listed as questionable with a wrist injury after he was limited in practice on Friday and Saturday with the injury. It was the first time he had been listed on the injury report with that injury this season. But the problem is that the injury certainly was not new. In fact, it sounds like he’s dealt with that same injury all season.
Before the game, ESPN’s Lisa Salters said that Hill told her he has been dealing with the injury throughout the entire season, since Week 1.
“He said that it’s something that he’s really been dealing with all season long. He said it first started in training camp, but then he said it got re-aggravated when he was arrested right before the opening game of the season. He said he was taken to the ground by police — we remember seeing that video — and he said that that’s where the further damage was done. Tyreek told me that he’s had an MRI, and he said that the MRI has shown that he has a torn ligament. That he said he is playing through it,” Salters said.
“He said he’s just been quiet about it all season long,” she said. “So I said to him, ‘Do you not want me to say anything about it? Because you just told me all about it.’ He said, ‘It’s fine. It’s something that I have to deal with.’”
Hill essentially confirmed this report after the game, revealing that he has indeed dealt with the injury all season, saying he initially suffered the injury “against the Commanders Week 1” and that he “kind of like reaggravated it trying to block my tail off during the course of the year.”
Obviously, this appears to be a blatant violation of the league’s injury reporting rules, which would have required the team to report Hill’s injury when it occurred.
These rules have been in place for a long time, but they are especially important in the modern era with sports gambling now legal across the country as millions of people put their money on the line.
And as Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk points out, it sounds like the league could investigate Hill and the Dolphins into how and why this injury went unreported.
“The NFL launched the injury report in 1947 as a way to combat illegal gambling. Now that gambling is legal, there’s an even greater obligation to insist on transparency when it comes to the health of the players,” Florio wrote.
“Maybe Hill hid the injury from the Dolphins. Some players will do that, getting treatment and care on their own. If that’s what happened, let’s find out. The league should investigate — and the league should share the results.”
Obviously, this is a very interesting situation.
