The Falcons angered gamblers and fantasy-football owners throughout the nation on Sunday, by barely using rooking running back Bijan Robinson. The problem wasn’t that he had only 11 snaps and one touch. The problem was that no one outside of the Falcons knew anything was amiss.
It’s clear from Robinson’s comments that it was not a sudden illness. He said he was “feeling weird” on Saturday night, and that by Sunday morning he was “feeling completely out of it.”
And that’s when the Falcons should have said something to the Buccaneers and to the NFL. The easy approach would have been to describe him as “questionable” with an illness.
That would have put the Buccaneers on notice that Robinson might not play, and/or that he might not play his usual amount. More importantly, it would have allowed people who either used Robinson in for-money fantasy games and/or made wagers on various Robinson-based props to go in a different direction.
The league has told PFT that it will “follow up with the club.”
The league should. And, frankly, the Falcons should be sanctioned for failing to disclose the situation.
There’s a clear strategic incentive in such situations to say nothing. It’s for the NFL to create a disincentive strong enough to deter teams from keeping quiet. Otherwise, teams that are trying to win football games (especially if/when the coach of the team thinks he might be approaching the hot seat) will choose to say nothing and regard the penalty as a cost of doing business they way in which the team chooses to do so.
The punishment must exceed the perceived or actual benefit the Falcons got from keeping the Bucs in the dark about Robinson. And, surely, the Falcons saw a benefit. Otherwise, they would have done the right thing and informed the league that Robinson was ill, and that it might affect his availability. Because he was, and it did.