Seahawks’ Richard Sherman suggested that injury reports put out by the NFL are actually intended for Las Vegas and gambling, despite the football league claiming to be against betting on games.
The Seattle cornerback spoke out after sustaining a hamstring injury during the season opener at Green Bay, forcing him out of practice for two weeks.
It’s standard practice for the league to release regular injury reports to media ahead of Sunday games, The Seattle Times noted, adding that Sherman felt there were ulterior motives.
“I guess from what I understand the rules is for the gamblers, for Vegas, to make sure the odds and everything are what they are supposed to be, which is apparently what the league is concerned about when talking about injuries and things like that,” Sherman said, per the Times.
“So maybe somebody should look into that, because I thought we weren’t a gambling league and we were against all those things. But our injury report is specifically to make sure the gamblers get their odds right.”
An NFL spokesperson responded to Sherman’s claims, per Sporting News, saying that the policy of releasing injury reports was in place to ensure “that all clubs provide accurate and timely information to other clubs, the public and media about every player's availability.”
The spokesperson further stipulated that the policy was “designed for competitive fairness purposes and curtails the potential for someone to attempt to gain and exploit inside information.”
The NFL has said on several occasions that it opposed gambling and had no intentions of compromising its gambling policies.
League commissioner Roger Goodell re-iterated that earlier in the year, when news broke of The Raiders moving to Las Vegas, the mecca of gambling.
“We have to make sure that we continue to stay focused on making sure that everyone has full confidence that what you see on the field is not influenced by any outside factors,” he said about the NFL’s gambling policy.
“That is our number-one concern. That goes to what I consider the integrity of the game. We will not relent on that.”
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