Life in the NFL can be what Cheap
Jerseys
the philosopher Thomas Hobbes called "nasty, brutish, and
short". In other words, injuries happen all the time. The NFL uses the Injured
Reserve (IR) list to denote players who have been hurt severely enough that they
are out for the remainder of the season and are ineligible to return to
action.Other People Are ReadingNFL Injured Reserve RulesNFL Rules on Reserve
ListsPrint this article Placing Players on IRAccording to the NFL's current
Collective Bargaining Agreement, teams can have no more than 53 players on their
rosters, either active or injured. The Injured Reserve list is designed to help
teams keep their active rosters below that limit. The IR list allows teams to
take severely injured players off their rosters and replace them with healthy
players. However, if a player is placed on IR, he cannot return to action for
the remainder of the season--even if he fully recovers from his injuries. This
becomes a crucial decision because if a team does not put an injured player on
IR, then that injured player continues to count on the team's roster.Effects of
IROnce a player is put on IR he is lost for the season. Teams must gauge whether
an injury is serious enough to warrant a player's absence for an entire season
or whether he might be able to come back and play effectively. This decision is
given more weight because teams must continue to pay the full salary of a player
on IR . They also must expend effort finding healthy players to
replace a player on IR--chosen from a team's own practice squad, bought through
free agency, or plucked from other football leagues in Canada and Europe. On the
other hand, if a player does not go on IR, a team automatically gives up a
roster spot for that player and could be at a competitive disadvantage.Weekly
Injury ListsIn addition to IR, NFL teams release weekly injury reports during
the season. These reports typically come out Wednesday and are updated over the
weekend leading up to games on Sunday and Monday. If a player is listed as "Out"
on a team's injury report, he definitely will not play that particular week.
Players listed as "Out" on weekly injury reports are different from players on
IR. They may come back to play later in the season and they count on a team's
53-man roster. Players on IR cannot come back and do not count on the roster. In
addition, on weekly injury reports, players may also be listed as "Doubtful",
"Questionable", or "Probable". (Reference 3, bottom of page)Arguments Against
IRESPN's Greg Easterbrook in his online column Tuesday Morning Quarterback says
IR lists are "vestiges of the 1950s" and should be abandoned. Easterbrook says
before the salary cap was instituted in 1993, teams would abuse IR lists by
stockpiling them with healthy players they did not want other teams to have. In
addition, John Clayton of ESPN suggests the NFL should consider changing its IR
rules and create a new "designated injury" category for players severely hurt
who still might be able to come back later, like baseball's disabled list.
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