Writers of Pro Football Prospectus 2008

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23 Oct 2009

Cromartie Bruises Knee

Antonio Cromartie has a bruised knee, and while he might not miss time, he's certainly not going to be 100 percent for a while.

We normally don't link minor injury XPs like this one, but I wanted to talk about something related to Cromartie and how it affects the Chargers projection. In the past, A.J. Smith has showed a willingness to take players with medical red flags that others might have passed on; namely, Cromartie and Marcus McNeill.

It's been an interesting time since. McNeill's had some minor injuries here and there (only in football are broken hands a minor injury), but he's stayed pretty healthy, all things considered. Then again, the concern with him wasn't as much of a constant string of injuries as it was a concern that stenosis would eventually affect his career in the long-term.

Cromartie, on the other hand, came into the league with a torn ACL. Since then, he's played one year as a backup, had one fantastic season, played one year with a fractured hip, and is now having knee issues again.

At the moment, we don't have the ability to project how healthy teams will be, let alone how healthy an individual player might be. We don't project teams to be ridiculously healthy or injured, just to be league-average, and then incorporate the effects of that into our projection system. That's why it's always ridiculous to read things like "Oh, they didn't see Miami coming, so how can they be any good?"; of course we didn't see Miami coming last year, because Tom Brady tore his ACL, Chad Pennington got shipped over, and they had 48 guys on their roster or so stay healthy all season. If we'd had Miami's AGL total available to us at the beginning of the season, the effects predicted by my own research on injuries would suggest that they'd win about three more games than expected alone.

So looking at the Chargers and Rams predictions this year, perhaps we were naive to suggest that they'd be at a league-average level of health. Maybe not. It's something I know I'll be working on this offseason.

Posted by: Bill Barnwell on 23 Oct 2009

4 comments, Last at 26 Oct 2009, 5:03pm by Boston Dan

Comments

1
by Todd S. :: Fri, 10/23/2009 - 10:17am

Excellent post, Bill. Thanks for sharing the thought process on this issue.

2
by Bowl Game Anomaly :: Fri, 10/23/2009 - 11:04am

Agreed. More accurate injury projections are probably the key to better team projections, since injuries (and health) can have such a massive impact on success and failure.

Also, when you do get around to better predicting individual injuries, your fantasy projections will crush everyone else. That's worth pursuing even if it turns out to be Quixotic.

3
by Scott C :: Sat, 10/24/2009 - 1:15pm

Its probably not possible to predict with much accuracy except for rare outliers and those that are very old, which the system already accounts for.

No way does it predict a bruised knee for Cromartie, (not like he was dominant in the first few games while healthy anyway), but it could maybe have tempered the Merriman prediction somewhat. He probably has a few months to a year before normal again, or "normal" will never happen (the LaVar Arrrington complex) .

4
by Boston Dan :: Mon, 10/26/2009 - 5:03pm

According to DVOA, in 2008 and so far in 2009 not including the game yesterday, the Falcons offense as a whole has been better (and amongst the league's best) at home.

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