FO: Some NFL Injuries Hurt More Than Others

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Football Outsiders, who brought us roughing the passer statistics earlier this year( http://extremeskins.com/showthread.php?t=305414), published an article chronicling the effects of injuries in the NFL.

Here are some highlights from FO's study:

1. The Ray Lewis Rule (aka, Age is just a number.)

"The average age of a team’s starters has no relationship to the injury rate of those starters, no matter how it is broken down or analyzed."

This may be due to a "survival of the fittest" effect. In general, players who have lengthy careers are players who are most able to withstand the rigors of their profession. Players who are susceptible to injury or who use poor technique do not last in the Not For Long league.

Some of the teams with the oldest starting lineups (2001-2008) include the 2001 Baltimore Ravens, 2001 Oakland Raiders and the 2006 New England Patriots.

Last year, of the 11 starters over the age of 35, only two missed signifcant playing time: Rodney Harrison and John Kitna. Veterans like Kurt Warner and Lorenzo Neal were effective players.

2. The Belichick Effect (The injury report)

"Historically, those listed as probable play 89.4 percent of the time, those listed as questionable play 54.0 percent of the time, and those listed as doubtful play 7.7 percent of the time. That bears little resemblance to the 75/50/25 split that the injury list is popularly thought to represent."

3. The Tom Brady* Corollary (Offensive injuries are more significant than defensive ones.)

Offensive injuries have not only a much stronger correlation to a team’s won-lost record than defensive injuries, but also a stronger relationship with changes in offensive performance than defensive injuries do with a change in defensive performance.

The 2008 Baltimore Ravens and the 2007 Indianapolis Colts suffered brutal onslaughts of defensive injuries but both teams won more than 10 games and were playoff competitors

None of the teams who owned the ten most injured offenses made it to the post-season.

Football Outsiders has this to say: "The implication of that finding would be that offensive players are more valuable and that more money should be spent on securing quality offensive depth than defensive depth. "

*For the Tom Brady haters, this rule could also be named after Chad Pennington, who has led his team to the playoffs everytime he has played more than 10 games.

4. The Joe Thiesman Conclusion

The injuries:

Hamstring injuries--players missed 149 more games than they were expected to. The number far surpasses that of any other body part.

Groin injuries have also been problematic with players missing 30 more games than expected.

However players participated in 77 more games more games than expected when they were listed with a shoulder injury.

http://www.nytimes.c...gewanted=1&_r=1

I know that this article is a little old, but I thought that it was interesting, particularly the conclusion about offensive vs defensive injuries.

[Bubble Screen]

:obvious:

In other news, some earthquakes are worse than others.

[Califan007 The Constipated]

None of the teams who owned the ten most injured offenses made it to the post-season.

This is us this year lol