The way the 49ers handled the surprise decision to sit out running back Christian McCaffrey (calf, Achilles) for Monday night’s game against the Jets raises a lot of questions, especially since running back Jordan Mason said he heard he would start on fridaya day before the 49ers listed McCaffrey as questionable.

We asked the union about the situation.

“We decline to comment,” a league spokesperson told PFT via email.

It’s unclear whether that means everything is fine. If so, why don’t you say so?

Whatever the league does (or doesn’t do), the situation exposes a very real problem with injury reporting rules. It’s easy to comply. It’s even easier to manipulate. If you have doubts, make the player doubtful and don’t say anything until he’s inactive.

While it’s unrealistic to require teams to reveal their inactive players before warmups, the league could come up with something that would send a clearer message about a player’s potential unavailability.

Maybe the league doesn’t have to do that. Maybe the 49ers broke the rules by not downgrading McCaffrey to questionable. Even if his status was questionable on Friday and not questionable, it became questionable at some point before he was cut. The moment the 49ers realized McCaffrey was on the wrong side of a 50-50, the downgrade should have happened.

It is not our job to dream up possible revisions to a broken set of rules, especially in an era of legalized gambling and widespread NFL profit from it. At a minimum, the league should eliminate the ability of teams to label a starting player as questionable and dismiss him without warning as little as 90 minutes before kickoff.

For a wide range of betting and fantasy football matches, 90 minutes before kick-off is far too late, especially for the last game of the weekend.