On Saturday, the Baltimore Ravens made a rather surprising announcement that star quarterback Lamar Jackson would not play this week against the Chicago Bears, announcing that he was limited in practice this week despite previously declaring that he had been a full participant in practice. As a result, they will now face an NFL investigation.
As Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk points out, the league requires every team to accurately report a player’s injury status throughout the week, and it is “highly unusual” for a team to change a player’s practice status retroactively.
“Retroactively changing a player’s practice status is highly unusual, and could land the Ravens in hot water. The NFL requires teams to release accurate information about a player’s practice status because the NFL does not want insiders passing along information to gamblers. If there was ever a week when NFL teams needed to be transparent about that, it was this week, when the FBI arrested an NBA player and an NBA coach amid accusations that they were providing information to gamblers,” Smith wrote for [Pro Football Talk](https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/ravens-rule-out-lamar-jackson-admit-he-was-not-a-full-participant-in-fridays-practice) this week.
Needless to say, the Ravens will almost certainly be facing an investigation from the NFL as to how and why Jackson’s injury status was incorrectly reported, and they could face some punishment as a result.
“So the Ravens could be in trouble in two respects: Having to play the Bears without Jackson, and having to explain why they said Jackson was a full participant in practice when he wasn’t,” Smith wrote.
It will certainly be interesting to see what the NFL concludes in this case, especially considering the high-profile FBI’s involvement in the NBA betting scandal.