I guess this is what happens when you want two Detmers but only have room for one Detmer.

According to former Eagles quarterback Ty Detmer, his brother (and fellow former Eagles QB) Koy was once asked by the Eagles to fake an injury so he could be placed on injured reserve.

Ty, speaking to Luther Broughton on the Cheap Shots podcast, said this all happened near the end of training camp in 1997. Koy was a rookie and the Eagles needed to trim the roster. The problem was, they wanted to keep Koy around (or rather, didn’t want someone else to get him). So, they asked him to fake-aggrivate an old knee injury. Ty explained, via Off The Record Sports:

“[Koy] came up to me like a couple days before that day and was like ‘hey, they want me to go on injured reserve so they can keep me around, what do you think?,’ And I’m like, ‘well, if they’re going to keep you around, you know I wouldn’t not do it.’ So that day before practice he comes up and he’s like ‘okay, today’s the day they told me.’

So, we’re kind of in team period at the end of practice and they’re like ‘alright, Koy, you’re in!’ And so, he kind of goes in, runs a play, runs another play and then he looks at me and gives me this wink as he’s stepping in to call the play. And so I’m like, trying not to laugh cause I’m like, how is this gonna go down, you know? It’s a running play. He hands off and and as he’s coming out after the hand off to carry out his bootleg fake, he goes down and rolls around and grabs his knee.

And oh man, you know, the whole practice kinda stops like, ‘what happened?’ And guys were coming up to me and, ‘oh man is this the same knee he hurt at Colorado?’ And I’m like ‘yeah I think so I don’t know, maybe he just you know twisted a little or something.’ So they end up bringing the cart out and they cart him off the field.

So, practice ends and I go into the training room you know, and there he is laying on the training room table with a towel over his face and I just kind of raised the corner up and peeked and he’s got this big old grin on his face. You know like ‘how was that for my acting job?’ I had to get out of there because I was about to just die laughing. And the rest of the team, you can’t say anything because nobody is supposed to know.”

Broughton, who was part of that same Eagles draft class with Koy, confirmed the story. There are rules in place to stop players from faking injuries during the game in order to get a free timeout or slow an offense down, but only a deep reading of the NFL rulebook — literally the one thing Darren Rovell is useful for — could tell you if the Eagles should have been punished for this then (or now?). There has to be some rule against it though, and the Eagles were willing the break it to have a monopoly on the Detmer family. Now they can’t even cut a wide receiver without the NFLPA investigating. The 90s were simpler times.

via Deadspin