(Image Source: Real Clear Sports)


BY CHRISTINA MARTIN

You're watching multisource sports video news analysis from Newsy.

The NFL sent a memo to players and coaches: stop faking it. The memo came two days after a New York Giants player went down late in the first quarter Monday night.

“Deon Grant’s been in the league for a while, miraculously he recovered quickly, 34..oh, wait, we had two guys go down and fake injuries.”

“Yeah I hate to say that he’s not really hurt, but that is a tactic defenses have used in the past.”

A Fox Sports analyst says the NFL needs to come down hard on injury fakers.

“If the NFL doesn’t do something, they’re gonna be able to do that, fake this injury and there will be no advantage at all. I think it’s silly, I think it’s ridiculous. In soccer you have the red card, you should bring in the red card in the NFL as well.”

But as a WMAQ writer points out this isn’t new. And this definitely isn’t soccer. He tells foes of flopping this is what makes Americans sports great.

“I like to see a defense fight back using every available tool in its arsenal, and if a little flopping needs to be deployed, so be it. Maybe you think it's bush league, but sometimes bush league tactics are what makes sports such naughty fun."

Thing is -- who’s to say if a player’s really injured? The Cover Two’s Jordan Heck writes that’s why this just ain’t gonna work.

“...the rules state that the only way discipline is handed out is if a player, coach or club official admits to faking an injury. Do you really see that happening? If draft picks are on the line, I don’t think that the honor code is going to cut it.”

And combative ESPN commentators Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon finally agree on something--the punishment for injury faking needs to hit teams where it hurts--their wallets.

WILBON: “Its gonna become more subtle and more sophisticated. That’s why I say, in retrospect, if it happens twice, a million dollars!”
KORNHEISER: “If its going to become more subtle and you can’t do it then, I agree with you, fine the teams a million dollars, that’s fine.”

And they just might -- that NFL memo lists fines as one of the possible punishments of faking it.


Transcript by Newsy.