[Bette]

After months of silence regarding the precise nature of the shoulder injury that caused him to land on injured reserve last season, Patriots running back [COLOR=#D81718 ! important]Laurence Maroney[/color]has opted to speak out about his condition.
And, in so doing, he has revealed that the team concealed it.
“I had a broken bone and I was trying to play with it,” Maroney said Saturday before teammate Kevin Faulk’s charity softball game, according to Christopher Gasper of the Boston Globe.
As Gasper explains, Maroney injured the shoulder in Week Two against the Jets, skipped the Week Three game against the Dolphins, and then returned to action against the 49ers, after a Week Four bye.
But his name did not appear anywhere on the injury report for the Week Five game against San Francisco.
The message? He was completely healthy.
The reality? He was anything but.
In explaining that he was frustrated by the perception that he lacks toughness, Maroney made it even more clear that there was an effort to keep the injury hidden.
After the Week Five game against San Fran, Maroney was placed on injured reserve.
In fairness to the Patriots, the team listed him as “questionable” with a shoulder injury for the Week Three game that he missed. But the broader context created the perception that, by Week Five, the situation had resolved.


ProFootballTalk.com - Pats Hid Maroney’s Broken Shoulder


Aww, who could believe the Patriots would do something like this.
Shades of Eric Mangini!