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In November, Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill told ESPN’s Lisa Salters that he did suffered a wrist injury during training camp. However, Hill did not appear on the injury report with a wrist injury until Week 10.
We then asked the NFL if there will be a review of the situation, or if the league has a comment.
“The league routinely communicates with the club when questions arise regarding the injury report,” NFL chief spokesman Brian McCarthy said via email Nov. 12.
On Thursday, agent Drew Rosenhaus appeared on Pat McAfee’s show. Rosenhaus prefaced his comments about the current state of relations between Hill and the team with an important admission.
“So let’s go back to training camp,” Rosenhaus said. “Tyreek fights with the Washington commanders, and break a wrist. We have top doctors telling Tyreek, ‘You have to operate on this, you’re going to miss the season.’ Tyreek tells me and the Dolphins, ‘I’m not going to miss the season. I want to play. I want to be here for my team.’ . . . That held him back all year.”
In some cases, teams don’t disclose a player’s injury because the team doesn’t know. If the player is treated outside the facility, there is no record of it.
But whether what Rosenhaus said was accurate and true, the Dolphins knew. And they didn’t reveal it. In nine weeks.
Here is where it gets very interesting. And maybe very expensive. With the league and its teams scrambling for every last gambling sponsorship dollar they can, Rosenhaus’ comments open the door to a nationwide class-action lawsuit against the NFL and the team seeking full compensation for all relevant bets (including Hill’s bets that didn’t make it through) for concealment of injury.
It is not excessive; i’m inevitable Just this week, a class action lawsuit was filed against DraftKings alleging it lured consumers “with intentionally misleading promotions and false promises of ‘risk-free’ first bets, which led many gamblers to develop an addiction.”
If that sounds a little nebulous, it’s not: The Dolphins, who receive millions in sports betting advertising, deliberately hid from consumers for nine weeks the fact that Tyreek Hill had a broken wrist, and the NFL negligently failed to develop and/or enforce policies and procedures aimed at ensuring full compliance.
All it takes is one bettor betting on any of Hill’s props by Week 9, and we’re on our way.
The league is smart enough to know that it shouldn’t encourage such potential and inevitable litigation by telling the world about its communications with teams that may have violated the injury policy. Thanks to Rosenhaus’s honesty, it doesn’t matter.
Do not ask to change anything until such cases are raised. Once that happens, the injury policy will undoubtedly be revised — possibly after the league targets one team (like the Saints in 2012 for a widespread bounty culture) and issues suspensions and other penalties, including forfeiture of draft picks.
