There are 11 games on today’s National Football League schedule as six teams enjoy a bye week. Seven of today’s games are played outdoors, and all have mild weather conditions with no rain in the forecast.
The NFL and gambling world has long been in partnership. It didn’t start just a couple years ago when the NFL jumped into advertising agreements with businesses they used to publicly condemn as evil. No one in the NFL front office is naive to the fact that wagering on NFL games enhances their product exposure. Yet, until a few years ago, the NFL reaped the benefits of gambling while supposedly distancing itself from the activity.
In fact, the NFL’s relationship with the NFL goes back nearly 80 years when they introduced injury reports as a required weekly practice for teams. There was a scandal in the 1946 championship game in which a team hid injuries and inside information offered gamblers a huge edge. The integrity of the game was called into question, and to quell the dissenting voices the NFL adopted the practice of each team having to submit an injury report to alert everyone of what players were active and what players were possibly or certainly going to miss an upcoming game.
That is why both the gambling world and the NFL is up in arms this week when the Baltimore Ravens appear to have cheated on the availability of quarterback Lamar Jackson for today’s game against the Chicago Bears. Jackson has been sidelined for weeks with a hamstring injury and no team in the league is more reliant on their quarterback than John Harbaugh’s Ravens.
With him, the Ravens are a Super Bowl threat.
Without him is a major reason they come into action today with a 1-5 record … only the winless New York Jets have fewer wins than the Ravens.