Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill missed practice on Friday and Saturday with a wrist injury. He played on Monday night. Before the game, he made it clear that the wrist is — and has been — a problem.
Consider this quote from ESPN’s Lisa Salters from the Monday night pregame show, regarding Hill’s wrist: “He said that it’s something that he’s really been dealing with all season long. He said it first started in training camp, but then he said it got re-aggravated when he was arrested right before the opening game of the season. He said he was taken to the ground by police — we remember seeing that video — and he said that that’s where the further damage was done. Tyreek told me that he’s had an MRI, and he said that the MRI has shown that he has a torn ligament. That he said he is playing through it. . . . And he said he’s just been quiet about it all season long. So I said to him, ‘Do you not want me to say anything about it? Because you just told me all about it.’ He said, ‘It’s fine. It’s something that I have to deal with.'”
It’s now something the Dolphins might have to deal with, too. Because even though Hill has been dealing with the wrist injury since before Week 1, he didn’t appear on the injury report with a wrist injury until Week 10.
Will the league look into it? Probably not. If so, there probably won’t be a punishment. In an age of legalized gambling, the NFL seems to be very careful about admitting to the world that teams are violating the injury reports. Once that happens, folks who have placed wagers with sports books that stuff sponsorship dollars into the pockets of the NFL might want refunds. And one of them might file a class action against the NFL and the team that hid the injury seeking full reimbursement for all relevant wagers (including Hill’s prop bets that failed to hit the over) due to the hiding of the injury.
It’s the second time in recent days that a potential injury-report violation has bubbled to the surface. On Friday, Eagles coach Nick Sirianni said that quarterback Jalen Hurts missed practice on Wednesday due to an ankle injury. Sirianni then corrected himself, saying that Hurts was resting before claiming that he confused his franchise quarterback with someone else.
As long as the league does nothing about it, it will keep happening. But even if the league doesn’t publicly smack a team like the Dolphins for not disclosing Hill’s wrist injury, the evidence is there to support a mass claim against the league and the Dolphins for compensation. The violation is hiding in plain sight. The smoking gun came from Hill’s mouth, as related to Salters on Monday night.
Hill also spoke to NFL Network’s Taylor Bisciotti after the game. And Hill did little to contradict what he had told Salters.
He said he initially injured the wrist “against the Commanders Week 1” and that he “kind of like reaggravated it trying to block my tail off during the course of the year.”
Because the Dolphins haven’t played the Commanders in the regular season (the Dolphins faced Jacksonville in Week 1) and because Hill didn’t play when the Dolphins faced the Commanders in the preseason, Hill presumably is referring to the joint practices with the Commanders in the days before that game.
Regardless — and even though he didn’t mention the altercation with police as a contributing factor to the injury — Hill admitted in his own words that he had a wrist injury that was both aggravated throughout the season and hidden until recently.
The NFL launched the injury report in 1947 as a way to combat illegal gambling. Now that gambling is legal, there’s an even greater obligation to insist on transparency when it comes to the health of the players.
Maybe Hill hid the injury from the Dolphins. Some players will do that, getting treatment and care on their own. If that’s what happened, let’s find out. The league should investigate — and the league should share the results.
Even if the end result is a class action against the NFL, the Dolphins, and/or Hill brought by anyone who bet on Hill to hit the over on yards, catches, and/or touchdowns in any of Miami’s 2024 games.
