Jaguars will fine players $10K for talking about injuries to media

Mularkey doesn't want Jags talking to the media about injuries. (US Presswire)

The NFL requires that teams fill out injury reports throughout the week. This is to, you know, make things fair. (And to fill in fantasy football owners and gamblers, but the league won't tell you that part.) And for the most part, players talk about injuries. Don't bank on the Jaguars doing that this year, though.

New coach Mike Mularkey told Tania Ganguli of the Florida Times-Union on Friday that any Jaguars who spoke to the media about their injuries would be fined a whopping $10,000.

"Anything I know about a guy, anything I know is hurting on him, any comment he makes will play into how they attack a team or a position," Mularkey said. "I just don't think it's anybody else's business. If I feel like it's going to jeopardize us or compromise us, I will not talk about specific injuries. Right now we're really not in a position where I don't feel free to talk about them because I feel pretty good about our team right now. But I will be the only voice."

Mularkey even went so far as to say that players shouldn't be telling their mothers about how they're feeling, injury-wise.

It's a pretty strict stance to take from the perspective of being friendly with the media and keeping the Jaguars interesting from a coverage standpoint vis-a-vis injuries to higher-profile players.

But Mularkey might have a point too: remember when Gregg Williams now infamously told Saints players to target certain players because of certain injuries? Avoiding injury-related talk to the media will limit the ability of any over-excited opposing coaches or players from doing similar things.

Additionally, discussing injuries to the media only helps the gameplans of opponents, even if they've got perfectly good intentions. Hypothetically, if Maurice Jones-Drew (provided he ever gets into camp) talks about a how badly his ankle injury is bothering him, it'll give the Jags opponent that week an advantage in terms of knowing how much they'll lean on the star running back.

So it seems like a particularly strict rule, and it probably won't go over well with Jaguars players if they start losing bills for chatting with the media, but Mularkey might not have gone as far overboard as it initially seems. Just don't expect fantasy football players and gamblers to be real thrilled about it.

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