Why do we have so many injuries?

[Ramlock]

Its just an excuse.

No, it's an opinion you disagree with and want to dismiss.

Interesting that you use the poster team for continuity, Pittsburgh.

 

[WvuIN02]

You're just repeating things which are wrong. Pouncey started week 1, Pittsburgh lost their starting tackle at the end of August....so puhlease with that argument. Then they lost another starter in October, your facts you are basing your argument off of are just plain false.

Steelers at several points of the year were on QB number 4!!!!! On top of losing the RB with the most yards from scrimmage last year. Sorry but Rams lose the injury excuse argument by a mile. Ben out for a large part of the year, his backup Gradkowski gone for the season, Vick brought in for him and then he is gone for the season, Landry Jones.....4th string QB at the most important position. And theyre still in the playoff hunt

Excuses excuses, next man up. Injuries happen to everyone, good teams play around it. Remember when the Rams season looked bleak and they had this Kurt Warner guy come in? Yea, me too. When you neglect your QB position for years and routinely suck at identifying talent at the position, there is nobody to blame but you. Derek Carr, Russel Wilson, etc etc...all guys Rams passed on because they went all-in on a bad QB that they wasted a pick on in the first place. Making those kinds of errors set a franchise back years.

 

[Orchid]

Are we discussing OL'ers or entire other unit IR designations? Looking at the current Steelers OL they have four of the original five starters in their lineup. Four have started all 11 games this season. They have one rookie starting who has been active all 11 games this season & started the last 5 games @ OT. I see little comparisons between the current Steeler OL with 4/5 of starters playing & starting with the Rams who have injuries to 3 opening season OL'er starters & two injuries to the next up back up starters.

They were not their original starters.

4 of their originals starters are out vs our 2 (Brown and Saffold).

 

[WvuIN02]

No, it's an opinion you disagree with and want to dismiss.

Interesting that you use the poster team for continuity, Pittsburgh.

Theyre not the poster team for that....so lets look at that graph again, and a team I hate.

Compare Rams vs Patriots. That is the poster child for continuity. Hmm, I wonder why the good teams seem to be able to overcome big injuries and the bad ones dont. Matt freaking Cassel went 11-5. I'll wait.

 

[Ramlock]

3 coaches in 40 years is good continuity for Pitt

I do concede that there may be others in the poster

 

[OntarioRam]

As has been mentioned, the Rams don't necessarily have more injuries than most other teams. The problem is where they are concentrated. Almost all of our injuries are on the o-line. That's a recipe for disaster for any offence. But it's particularly dire for a team that relies on the run game, and simultaneously does not have a QB skilled enough to pass under pressure or get the ball out quickly with any sort of accuracy.

It's one thing to say "next man up" when many (or ideally all....) of your injuries are at different position groups. In that case, the "next man" is who he is supposed to be. When all of the injuries are concentrated at one position, however, you are no longer saying "next man up". Or even "2nd man up". You're saying 6th man up. Other than the New England Patriots - who appear to have the coaching staff and scheme prowess to win with any group of player personnel - what NFL team can consistently win in those circumstances? I think it is quite telling that the Rams were 4-3 before the injury bug hit hard. While playing one of the tougher schedules in the league.

 

[Orchid]

Mangameslost.com tracks games lost to injuries for NHL, MLB, NBA and NFL teams. Two articles are worth reviewing. The first is at http://www.mangameslost.com/the-most-injured-nfl-teams-since-the-2009-season/.

The Most Injured NFL Teams Since the 2009 Season
Nathan Currier NFL, NFL 2009 Season, NFL 2010 Season, NFL 2011 Season, NFL 2012 Season, NFL 2013 Season, NFL 2014 Season, NFL 2015 Season September 10, 2015


This article examines the injuries to National Football League teams since the 2009 season. Games missed due to injury and the measure of the cumulative impact to the team are analyzed.

Quantifying injuries to a sports team might appear to be relatively straightforward. Simply count the number of times a player misses a game due to an injury, and sum that up for the entire team, for the entire season. Table 1 contains the games missed due to injury counts for all teams from the 2009 to 2014 seasons.

Measuring the Impact of an Injury to a Team

But, can you measure injury ‘quality’? Your favorite team may have double the number of injuries of mine, but if your team is missing sideline players, and my team is missing 2 of its top linebackers, its starting quarterback, and my ace field-goal kicker, things are not equal.

The impact of injuries on a team is a more complex issue. Adding up the number of injured bodies to compare the impact on different teams is not enough.

The ‘Quality’ of Injuries

Our TMITT metric (pronounce it tee-mitt) measures the impact of a missing player based on their AV rating from Pro-Football-Reference.com, taking into consideration their number of injured games missed.

For instance, the TMITT-avpasser metric utilizes the AV rating of a player categorized as a ‘passer’ to measure his ‘quality’ and factors in the number of games he has missed due to injury. Likewise, TMITT-avdefense does the same for players categorized as ‘defensive’. TMITT-avtotal is a sum of the passer, defense, rush/receiver, kicker TMITT values for a team.

This is the measure of the ‘quality’ to a team of each player and their injury. Table 2 contains the total TMITT AV values (TMITT-avtotal) for each team going back to the 2009 season.

Below is a plot of the total games missed due to injury for each team against the quality of the injuries by the total TMITT metrics, going back to the 2009 season. You can also refer to our Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for more details on the TMITT metric.
​

For this period 2009 to 2014 the rams are 19th in terms of games lost and 26th in terms of the impact of a missing player based on their AV rating from Pro-Football-Reference.com, taking into consideration their number of injured games missed. Indy had the most missed games followed by Packers and the Jaguars, Interestingly, teams that won Super Bowls during this period were at the top or near the top in games missed and time missed impact to team.

The second chart is at http://www.mangameslost.com/category/nfl/nfl-2015-season/ and looks at the 5015 season through week 11.

NFL Week 11 Games Missed Due to Injury and IIT Metrics November 25, 2015
Nathan Currier NFL, NFL 2015 Season, NFL 2015 Season Games Missed November 25, 2015 1 Comment


Again, three of the least injured teams (STL, TEN, MIA) don’t hold a playoff spot, while three of the most injured teams in the league (NYG, PIT, NWE) sit in a playoff position.

Below are the Week 11 games missed numbers and IIT metrics (Injury Impact to Team) as of all games played up to November 25, 2015. In addition to my team data (Table 1) I provide individual player data (Table 2).

I report the games missed due to injury numbers (Out (Doubtful, Questionable, or Probable), Injured Reserve, and Physically Unable to Perform) that the NFL teams themselves report.

Found a mistake in my data? Let me know. Contact us or leave a comment below. For details on IIT and its different variations, and how they’re calculated, see my Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

What Do The Numbers Say?

1. Although the Washington Redskins (115), New York Giants (114), and New England Patriots (113) lead the league in number of games lost to injury it is actually the Pittsburgh Steelers who have a strong case that they are most impacted by injuries. The Steelers sit 8th in games lost to injury with 99, but they are tops in the league in IIT-avtotal with 1.538. They are impacted most in the league since their players that are injured, particularly in the Passer category (IIT-avpasser) and Defense category (IIT-avdefense) have greater Approximate Value ratings from Pro-Football-Reference.com.
2. The top IIT-av loss for a passer is Tony Romo who missed 7 games to injury (IIT-passer of 0.656).
3. The top IIT-av for a defensive player is Mike Adams and he has missed 10 games (IIT-defense of 0.563) while Alec Ogletree has missed 6 and is 2nd in IIT-defense (0.338).
4. Top IIT-rushrec is Arian Foster at 0.375 (6 games missed due to injury) and Jamaal Charles sits 2nd, missing 5 games (IIT-rushrec of 0.344).

St. louis has the least games missed with 41 which is just ahead of Miami.

This data shows that the Rams are probably not injury cursed. The Rams for what ever reasons do not seem to be able to overcome them as well as the better organizations.

 

[LACHAMP46]

I would say this if PB enters the 2016 season with a OL'er like Saffold being his main leader & player as a starter he should be fired on the spot. Saffold no longer merits starting material considerations.

LOL agreed with most of your post Boni.... I'll say, going into Sundevil Stadium, watching the warmups, Saffold is the Ram player that stands out on gameday....He's loud, very animated and pumping the team up....I'm sure coach Boo picks him as a leader because of this....I am hoping, his last injury, will be his final season-ending injury... Although I have a feeling, if you have a weak ligament in one area, you have some weak ligaments/tendons in other places as well. But he'll get one more year to start....and he'll have a quality backup waiting in the wings.
Young group, too many injuries, with backups worse than the league average and less experience. The one change, I would make, is add quality depth...Not necessarily experience, but quality...fill the O-Line with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th round backups. Not the guys we had/have...too many UDFA & 6th rounders...I like Wichman...but Rhaney is killing us...I like Reynolds, but Barnes is killing us...
And to all those that don't believe conditioning has something to do injuries. I bet (knock on laptop) that G-Rob doesn't leave a game this year. And he just happens to be our best conditioned lineman....just saying.

 

[BonifayRam]

LOL agreed with most of your post Boni.... I'll say, going into Sundevil Stadium, watching the warmups, Saffold is the Ram player that stands out on gameday....He's loud, very animated and pumping the team up....I'm sure coach Boo picks him as a leader because of this....I am hoping, his last injury, will be his final season-ending injury... Although I have a feeling, if you have a weak ligament in one area, you have some weak ligaments/tendons in other places as well. But he'll get one more year to start....and he'll have a quality backup waiting in the wings.
Young group, too many injuries, with backups worse than the league average and less experience. The one change, I would make, is add quality depth...Not necessarily experience, but quality...fill the O-Line with 2nd, 3rd, and 4th round backups. Not the guys we had/have...too many UDFA & 6th rounders...I like Wichman...but Rhaney is killing us...I like Reynolds, but Barnes is killing us...
And to all those that don't believe conditioning has something to do injuries. I bet (knock on laptop) that G-Rob doesn't leave a game this year. And he just happens to be our best conditioned lineman....just saying.

Saffold has always been very sharp & had great leadership skills but now has two weak reconstructed shoulders hard to get NFL level strong with this ongoing issue. His knees, back & neck has been battered too, along with the badly torn pectoral injury/surgery. I need to learn from history & Saffold work/injury history is as bad as it comes in the NFL. I think he will be a shell of his former 2013 shelf in 2016.

Barnes having two first yr newborn OG's (Rhaney & Wichmann) is going to cause him issues so I not going to bust him up too bad. GRob like you said is a super physical beast but he suffers as a technician which looms large when playing OLT. Garrett Reynolds is a better OG than OT.

 

[iamme33]

Theyre not the poster team for that....so lets look at that graph again, and a team I hate.

Compare Rams vs Patriots. That is the poster child for continuity. Hmm, I wonder why the good teams seem to be able to overcome big injuries and the bad ones dont. Matt freaking Cassel went 11-5. I'll wait.

there was also a year when the pats had so many injurys in their d backfield that they were converting wr to dbs and still had a winning record.

 

[LACHAMP46]

two weak reconstructed shoulders hard to get NFL level strong with this ongoing issue.

Faith....Coach Rock will get those shoulders peaking!!!!

 

[wolfdogg]

If foles doesn't throw that pick, we don't lose 2 starting linemen which means we don't lose the backups we've lost which means we're not having this conversation.

I don't remember but did foles blow the series just before long got hurt? If only he had made that throw, our d and Chris would not have been out there to get hurt.

Point is that many (not so obvious) factors come into play for injuries