National Football League

Seattle Seahawks Should Be Punished for Withholding Richard Sherman Injury

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 12:56 a.m. ET

Fansided, Luis Tirado Jr./FanSided via NFL Spin Zone

The Seattle Seahawks withheld injury information regarding cornerback Richard Sherman for the NFC Divisional Round game and should be punished for doing so.

The Seattle Seahawks violated the NFL’s policy when it comes to injury reports. During the week heading into the Seahawks’ NFC Divisional Round matchup against the Atlanta Falcons, Seattle failed to list cornerback Richard Sherman on their injury report.

At that time, Sherman was dealing with an MCL injury and, while he didn’t miss a single snap all season long as a starter, the Seahawks failed to list him that week. Ultimately, that’s a clear violation of ethics and the overall integrity of the rules in place. Being honest about any and all injuries is required by the NFL for obvious reasons since it can completely change a game plan by opponents.

The NFL should punish the Seahawks for this since there was no telling what kind of impact of being honest could have had against the Falcons. Since the Falcons easily took care of business against them anyway, had they known Sherman was listed as questionable as he should have been, they would have been able to adjust their offensive game plan accordingly.

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Seattle didn’t want to disclose that one of their main defensive cornerstones was playing hurt, clearly. Per Chris Mortensen of ESPN, head coach Pete Carroll revealed earlier this week that Sherman has been dealing with this MCL injury for the second half of the season, yet failed to fully list it on injury reports.

It appears the NFL might very well take away the second-round pick of the Seahawks in the 2017 NFL Draft for this issue. It should hopefully send a strong message to the organization and other teams across the NFL.

Many injury reports throughout the season had the Seahawks claiming Sherman was either limited or didn’t practice at all by claiming it was not related to any kind of injury. This kind of falsifying documents should be handled with severe consequences in the grand scheme of things.

Overall, the league needs to make an example out of the Seahawks to prevent these kinds of unethical procedures from occurring again in the future. The Seahawks have a history of either not being fully clear about injury reports or doing things behind the scenes when they’re not supposed to during offseason workouts. Hopefully, the league hits them hard with losing a draft pick and other hefty fines.