Raiders fined by NFL for breaking injury report rules

In addition to the myriad issues surrounding the Raiders on their bye week, it looks like the team is now in hot water for failing to comply with NFL rules regarding their injury report.

When a player who is listed on the injury report throughout the week is injured enough to not make a trip to a game, an NFL team is supposed to re-issue a new injury report that downgrades him to “Out”. Them’s the rules. But when Raiders guard Kelechi Osemele was listed as “Questionable” for the Chargers game in Los Angeles, he was injured enough to not go to the game and the team did not re-issue the report to reflect that fact. So now they have to shell out 20 large to the league for their transgression.

The $20K is really moot here, it’s the simple fact that teams that have their collective act together don’t do things like this. They don’t miss details, and surely there is someone at Raider HQ who is responsible for knowing about minutae like this and making sure things get done as Herr Goodell says they must be done. The rules on injury reporting used to be lax, but then teams (cough Patriots cough) abused it, as we can see by the fact that Tom Brady has been Questionable his entire career but never missed a start except when his knee exploded that one year. So now you better be honest and forthright.

This probably isn’t Jon Gruden’s fault directly, there are probably other people responsible for making sure the injury report gets done properly. But in a year when the Raiders have the stink of dysfunction, this sort of thing makes them look even less competent than they already do.