FINS CONTINUE INJURY SHENANIGANS

With all of the other stuff going on in the NFL, we’ve strayed a bit from our Quixotic obsession with inaccuracies in the injury reports, which according to some of you no one cares about. (There are plenty of one-eyebrowed guys in Jersey who might disagree.) The latest came earlier in the week from Ethan Skolnick of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (I think I was on the radio with him yesterday morning, but the last 24 hours are lost in a haze of caffeine and Bumetanide), who wrote on Monday that Dolphins safety Jason Allen was listed as “probable” for Sunday’s game against the Rams even though the team knew that Allen wouldn’t play due to a broken hand. Skolnick writes that, after the game, it became clear that players had been told not to disclose when they first knew that Allen wouldn’t play. One player even said that he was “sticking with the script.” Let’s be clear on this -- the Dolphins had a player with a broken hand and they listed him as “probable,” which means that there is a virtual certainty that he’ll be available for normal duty, not that there’s a 75 percent chance he’ll play. But Allen didn’t play. The same thing happened on November 23, after the Giants had listed Brandon Jacobs as probable but then made him a last-minute scratch, due to a knee injury. Whenever a player listed as probable doesn’t play, the team is required to explain the situation to the league office. It’s unknown whether such an explanation has been sought or provided in this case.