Jets G.M. Mike Tannenbaum admits he made a mistake when the team didn’t list Brett Favre on their injury report for the final month of the 2008 season despite Favre’s torn right biceps tendon.
The decision is coming under scrutiny from the NFL for possible rules violations. Tannenbaum knew Favre was hurt, but the team felt he gave them the best chance to win.
“I’ll take responsibility for that,” said Tannenbaum. “As general manager of this team I should’ve handled that differently and listed him on the report. We didn’t because he wasn’t getting treatment everyday and we knew he was going to play.”
There many annoying shades of gray related to how teams use the injury report. We mentioned the case of Laurence Maroney last season, who wasn’t listed in Week Five last year while playing with a broken shoulder.
A league official, however, pointed out to PFT’s Tom Curran that the examples of Favre and Maroney are “not exactly apples to apples.”
Maroney was listed in Week Three after suffering the injury, then was off the list when the Patriots returned after a Week Four bye. In theory, Maroney could have aggravated the injury in Week Five, knocking him out for the season. Then again, the shoulder was broken all along.
Either way, the Jets decision to omit Favre is worse, and Tannenbaum seems to know it.
That decision could wind up costing the organization, although Jets fans are probably angrier about the logic of playing Favre over a healthy Kellen Clemens in the first place. The Jets went 1-4 down the stretch, only winning when J.P. Losman handed them a game with a late fumble.
“I don’t want to get into the specifics of the decision but we all felt good about [Favre] playing down the stretch,” Tannenbaum said.