Bell had been hurt for a few weeks ... are we going to lose draft picks?

[SanAntonioSteelerFan]

"One guy who barely contributed to the game was Le’Veon Bell who suffered a groin injury and Ben was asked if this was something that they knew about heading into the game.

“Yes, yep,” Ben said. “We knew that Le’Veon was kind of dealing with this, he’s been dealing with it for a couple of weeks.” The team has not been listing Bell on the injury report and he was not on the injury report prior to the game against the Patriots.”

Doesn't the NFL frown on lying about the injury report?


http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2017/...t-executed-us//

[Chucktownsteeler]

We're already down 1 pick for J. Gilbert, correct?

[Ghost]

Being sore and being hurt to the point of possibly not playing are vastly different things. I'm not sure the NFL can say much about him not being listed for the 2 previous weeks when he had 29 carries for 167 yards followed by another 30 carries for 170 yards. Those are not the games of a man who's injured. I guess if he tweaked it in practice this week and they didn't make mention there could be an issue. Still think it's hard to prove they hid an injury.

I will say - Bell and Ben are complete imbeciles for even implying he was injured. Keep your d@amn mouth shut. Nothing good comes of even hinting it was a past issue.

[raycafan]

I think it is crap, it may have been a slight tweak. He played KC with out any injury looking run, just extended to far in NE. What players can't play with nicks and tweaks without having a note for mother letting everyone know.

[phillyesq]

An injury has to be "significant" or "noteworthy" to require reporting. It doesn't appear that he came out of any games or missed any practice time. He may have been a bit sore, but I'd imagine that most NFL players are. The link to the policy is below:

http://operations.nfl.com/media/2235/06-07-16-2016-injury-report-policy.pdf

Of course, terms like "significant" and "noteworthy" are inherently vague and subject to interpretation, but I don't think that any discipline comes out of this.

[SanAntonioSteelerFan]

Being sore and being hurt to the point of possibly not playing are vastly different things. I'm not sure the NFL can say much about him not being listed for the 2 previous weeks when he had 29 carries for 167 yards followed by another 30 carries for 170 yards. Those are not the games of a man who's injured. I guess if he tweaked it in practice this week and they didn't make mention there could be an issue. Still think it's hard to prove they hid an injury.

I will say - Bell and Ben are complete imbeciles for even implying he was injured. Keep your d@amn mouth shut. Nothing good comes of even hinting it was a past issue.

Yup. Then again, neither would be mistaken for a rocket scientist in a double blind taste test.

[Iron Shiek]

I heard on the radio that a player would have had to received treatment from the team in addition to missing time in practice for an injury to be designated into one of those two buckets. From how Tomlin described it in his presser the day after the game, Bell was treating it on his own (allegedly...we'll never truly know). But if you are icing and taking direction from a trainer and doing the therapy yourself, I don't think anything can officially be done by the league.

The one worry you have to consider though is the fact that he was missing practices for personal reasons. It lends to the theory that some shenanigans were going on, which I'm sure the NFL will investigate.

[Slapstick]

Again, lots of players were given the day off of various practices for various reasons...again, super hard to prove wrongdoing...

[Iron Shiek]

Right, I agree with you Slapstick, but it seems the NFL could dig in:

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com...n-bell-injury/

NFL has a dilemma over undisclosed Le’Veon Bell injury

Posted by Mike Florio on January 25, 2017, 8:31 AM EST

One week after Seahawks coach Pete Carroll admitted that the team had failed to disclose a knee injury suffered during the season by cornerback Richard Sherman , the Steelers have acknowledged the failure to disclose a groin injury to running back Le’Veon Bell . Unlike the Seahawks, however, the Steelers have stopped short of admitting that Bell’s injury required disclosure under the league’s injury report policy.
It was no coincidence that coach Mike Tomlin, in admitting that he knew about Bell’s groin injury, said that the injury “wasn’t significant.” Tomlin specifically was staying on the right side of the injury reporting policy.
The injury report policy specifically requires the disclosure of only “significant or noteworthy injuries (http://operations.nfl.com/media/2235/06-07-16-2016-injury-report-policy.pdf)” on the Practice Report. So the argument from the Steelers would be that, because Bell’s injury was not “significant,” it didn’t need to be disclosed.
Here’s the problem with that argument. Bell had been missing practice time. Each of the three Wednesdays before the team’s playoff games, Bell didn’t practice. Last Thursday, he missed practice for “personal reasons.”
The circumstances put the league office in a tough spot. If Bell missed no practice time, the folks at 345 Park Avenue could say, “The injury wasn’t significant, and Bell participated in all practices and games.” Since Bell missed four of nine practices over a three-week period with the “not injury related” designation at a time when Bell had a groin injury, the league will have a hard time burying its head in the sand on this one.
The availble evidence suggests that the “management” of Bell’s injury included giving him days off that deliberately were characterized as “not injury related” in order to conceal the injury. Without exploring the situation in further detail, there’s no way to know the truth.
But any investigation would expose just how easy it is to fudge the injury reports, something that pretty much every team does at one time or another, justified in part by the belief that everyone else is doing it, so we may as well do it, too.
Bottom line? The league would prefer to stay out of the injury report rabbit hole, because eventually it will become too clear to too many people that cheating on the injury report is widespread. The problem is that, between the Seahawks last week and the Steelers this week, the NFL may have no choice but to wallow in the reality that the hiding of injuries happens a lot more frequently than the average fan realizes.

[NorthCoast]

The alternative is NE's approach, list everyone every week. It's BB way of thumbing his nose at the nfl. No rules for listing a player that's not really injured.