Tucker Confirms Patriots Violated 'Injury Reserve' Rules
Posted by Mike Florio on May 22, 2008, 10:30 p.m.
In an item on SI.com that we meant to highlight a week ago but inadvertently forgot to mention, former NFL lineman Ross Tucker confirms the contention of former Pats employee Matt Walsh that the Patriots allowed some players on injured reserve to participate in practice.
The Tucker article gained attention today on ESPN.com because Tucker reiterated his remarks while being interviewed on ESPN’s NFL Live.
Said Tucker in the first paragraph of his May 15 article: “Walsh’s comments to commissioner Roger Goodell . . . that New England had players on injured reserve participate in practice wasn’t news to me. I had heard the Patriots did this before I signed with them in 2005 and I saw it firsthand during my time there. I asked veteran receiver Troy Brown about it one time and he responded, ‘Every team in the league does that.’ I quickly let him know none of the three teams I played for previously had done so.”
As Tucker explained, using players in IR in practice gave the players repetitions, which in theory helped them to develop. It also saved wear and tear on the players who weren’t on IR.
Omitted from the ESPN.com article is any reference to Tucker’s belief that other teams are bending and/or breaking rules in search for an edge.
“Bending rules is a fact of life in the NFL,” Tucker wrote. “From ballboys allowing the opposing team’s footballs to get soaked, to hotel employees scouring rooms for game plan sheets after a team heads to the stadium, there are several ways to get in on the act. Seemingly no organization, no matter how accomplished or destitute it may be, is immune from the win-at-all-costs mentality. Some teams cheat and never get caught. Others simply refrain from breaking the rules but bend them right to the breaking point.”
Though the ESPN.com item regarding Tucker’s allegations cites a report from the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Massachusetts in support of the assertion that Goodell will investigate the allegation that the Pats used IR players in practice, Goodell said during his May 13 press conference that, even if the allegations are substantiated, no further action would be taken against the Patriots.
“[T]he way we normally handle those matters,” Goodell said, “those are a matter of a team fine, if they are verified, and then they are handled on that basis. I would expect that if we were to verify it, that I would consider it part of the fine that I implemented against the Patriots, close to $750,000 between the Patriots and Bill Belichick, and I would not take any further action on that.”
But what of Goodell’s vow that, if he determines that the Patriots have engaged in rules violations to which they had not previously admitted, Goodell would throw the book at them? The Patriots received an opportunity in September 2007 to confess their sins; if they didn’t admit to using players on IR in practice and if they actually did and if that’s a violation of the rules, isn’t that evidence of a breaking of the rules to which the team failed to admit?
We’re not saying that Goodell should throw the book at the Pats; we’re only pointing out the fact that Goodell said that he would, if evidence arose of new cheating.
“Taping a walkthrough is much different from what I punished them for,” Goodell said last month regarding his then-pending meeting with Matt Walsh. Well, so is using players in practice who supposedly are hurt and unable to practice or play for the rest of the season.
We mention this for one reason — it meshes with the rumor that coach Bill Belichick warned Goodell that, if Goodell were to come after Belichick or the Patriots again for cheating, Belichick would publicly blow the whistle on all of the specific cheating practices in which other teams engage.
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Tucker Confirms Patriots Violated 'Injury Reserve' Rules
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