2008 Adjusted Games Lost

First - Are these values adjusted in any way for players that sustain major injuries in the last game of the season? e.g. Carnel Williams for the Bucs in the last game of 2008.

Anyone else think that the trainers in the photo for this article look like they have had a terrible fake tan accident?

Oh, and good article and all that...

I wonder if there is any correlation between individual teams and injuries over a longer period of time. It would be interesting to see if there are some teams that are consistently healthy/unhealthy. Injuries might not be completely random and may be a result of the franchise's environment(scheme, facilities, practice techniques, surface, trainers, etc.) Looking at the Eagles and Rams, they both suffered about the same amount of injuries over the last two years but the Rams had over twice as many adjusted games missed.

How do injured backups count when the starter is down? In the case of the Steelers running backs; Willie Parker went down, then Mendenhal.

At some point, you have to wonder if Bill Parcells has some kind of system that reduces injuries. The Cowboys were relatively injury-free as well in the years he was here as well as the year after he left. The years before and last year they had relatively normal amounts of injuries.

And specifically, it seems like it's the recurrent, nagging injuries that are absent, as plenty of players have had season-ending catastrophic injuries that require surgery. It just seems that no one ever comes up with a pulled groin or a strained hamstring with Parcells around.

It may just be that he has a preference for drafting/signing players with good injury history, as many of the players who were injured last year for the Cowboys were not "Parcells Guys" (Romo excepted, obviously).

"Then again, I'm a Bobby Carpenter believer." -- Barnwell

How are the Browns not up there for QB AGL? We had to pick up an play Bruce Gradkowski, our 4th QB of the year. If your system doesn't show that as a problem, it needs some tweaking.

How is Dwan Edwards considered a starter? Price, Ngata, Gregg, Suggs, so where does Edwards start?

The breakdown by position is interesting, but didn't PFP08 have AGL broken into Offense and Defense? I think that would be more useful-- any chance that Bill or some other Outsider could post it in the Comments?

If we weighted starters and reserves equally, the Broncos would have ended up with 57 AGL -- no team in the eight years we have data for have had more than 38.4 AGL.

This does nothing to take away my still continuing stunned response to the Broncos coaching change. And Denver was still 5th in offense DVOA (4th in rushing DVOA!) even with 7 different RBs.

I wonder where Shanahan might end up coaching next year. There should be no shortage of suitors.

The Ravens took some hits on offense too: Marshall Yanda, Demetrius Williams, Quinn Sypniewski, Adam Terry, Willis McGahee. Somehow Derrick Mason played thru the separated shoulder, so I guess it doesn't count; and Jared Gaither played too, thru various ailments; but those guys were nicked.

Really a very impressive season for them.

Did the numbers start with opening day, or did you account for losses in preseason? Just curious.

"The Ravens ended up with 36.5 AGL in the secondary last year, just barely beating out the Lions' 36.3. There was only a slight difference in performance. The Jets' starters were perfectly healthy, the only team in the league to be as such."

I think Eric Smith was technically the Jets' starting strong safety went he went out with a concussion (and suspension for his hit on Boldin on the same play.)

Nothing that people don't already know, but I think you really need to adjust for quality of player to make this really meaningful. For instance, I bet most folks would agree that losing Tom Brady for the entire year is probably worse than losing both Brodie Croyle and Damon Huard.

Actually, QB might be a position where it makes sense to only consider injuries to the starter... Losing two CB's is much much worse than losing one, because it reduces your depth and weakens your entire secondary. But the dropoff from a backup QB to another backup QB is not that large, so losing you starter and your backup isn't really that much worse than just losing your starter.

Sorry for consecutive posts, but I had another thought.

Does it make much sense to include rookies lost at the start of the year in this evaluation? After all, no one knows how good the rookie will be. For example, we know now that if Jerod Mayo or Joe Flacco had gone down in week 1, it would have been a major loss for the Pats or Ravens, but if Vernon Gholston had, well, it really wouldn't have mattered all that much.

With a rookie, even if they're penciled in as a "starter" on opening day, you never know if they're going to turn into a quality NFL player or not. So if they miss significant time their rookie year, we have no way of knowing what they cost their team by being injured.

Some thoughts/comments:

- No, we don't factor in injuries that happen in Week 17, because really, there's so few of them that really matter. How many starters go down with an injury in Week 17? I can only really think of two -- Cadillac and Shaun O'Hara a year ago. We don't track injuries that happen in the middle of games in any other week, so I'm comfortable with missing a couple of Week 17 injuries here and there.

- Absolutely, I think there are teams that are better at preventing and rehabilitating injuries than others. I also think there are teams that do a better job of identifying, acquiring, and employing sturdier players, and Bill Parcells' teams are one of them.

- We have the Baltimore starting defensive linemen as Edwards, Gregg, and Ngata, as Edwards started all of last year when Pryce was out. Therefore, we have Edwards and Gregg going down for the year with injuries as starters, and Pryce coming in with the "NEW STARTER" designation. If this is grossly inaccurate, please let me know.

- Guys like Gaither and Mason absolutely are included in the totals, but because they were listed as Questionable, their totals aren't as strong as someone who's Out or on IR.

- I was under the impression that Abram Elam was the starting safety in New York, not Eric Smith.

- Browns were fifth in the league in QB AGL, behind KC, DET, NE, and CIN.

- It's absolutely meaningful without adjusting for quality of player, since we already adjust for quality of player between starter and reserve. I expect it'll be even more meaningful once we are able to adjust for quality of starter. Not sure what your point about quarterbacks are -- absolutely, there are teams that suffer mightily when they're forced to go to their third-string quarterback than their second-string quarterback. Look at Cleveland.

- If a rookie's good enough to win a starting job and then he gets hurt, he's good enough to be included.

"Burleson couldn't make it out of the first week. Once Koren Robinson took over as a starter, we stopped counting Burleson"

Why did you stop counting Burleson when a chronically injured wash-out at three teams with bad hands was signed as a stop gap measure and started over injured players? Is it because Chewbacca lives on Endor?

Does adjusted games lost account for starters lost in the pre-season (e.g. Antwan Peek and Daven Holly of the Browns)?

Maybe I missed it, but are suspensions counted? The Vikings didn't miss Mckinnie any less for the first four games because he was suspended instead of injured, and the same will be true of the Williams Wall if they lose their lawsuit.

If Mckinnie's four missed games aren't already county, I'm even more impressed with the Vikings finishing 10-6, with a high number of injuries, against a harder than average schedule, and Gus Frerotte taking snaps for most of the season. They really were extremely good on the line of scrimmage.

As always, this is fascinating work. It does occur to me that the teams on the very bottom of the list (DET, STL, SEA, CIN) are disproportionately dreadful teams, and that their dreadfulness may be not only a consequence of their injuries, but also a cause. I wonder if there is a way to look at the injury records of teams that are out of the playoff race and see if they seem to rack up injuries at higher rates than do those teams that are still competitive. Anecdotally, it has seemed to me that when the teams I follow are firmly out of the playoff race, the number of players who suddenly need season-ending treatment seems to escalate quickly, but I'd be curious to know if that actually happens.

It would seem like it would be more helpful if there were SOME way to adjust for which players are actually injured (though doing it this way is certainly a good start, and more useful than nothing.) Lions starters are not the same quality player as Giants starters. The Steelers ranked as one of the most injured teams in the league and won the world championship; how do you explain that? Well, it's because all of their important players stayed healthy all year. Almost all of the Steelers' AGL are players that suck anyway (Marvel Smith, Kendall Simmons) and missed almost the entire season or players that aren't that important (Willie Parker, Rashard Mendenall) missing big chunks of time. Contrast that with the Cowboys, for instance, who weren't terribly injured (middle of the pack in ACL) but lost their best and most important player for four games, which is season-altering (ask the Patriots).

Then again, I don't know that there's any real utility in trying to figure out a way to properly adjust for quality of players lost; it's something the reader can glance over the list and decide for himself pretty easily...

Good stuff.

As a Broncos fan I can't help but think that the Denver O-line was the healthiest. I don't recall any injuries at all... Of course "probables" don't stand out to you as much as "outs" do. Still i can't remember any, and Clady-Hamilton-Wiegmann-Kuper-Harris are all 16/16. Unless you're counting Tom Nalen? If you are, then that's definately worthy of a subjective tweak, Casey Wiegmann's pro bowl performance considered.

Great work guys. There are 2 big questions that commenters raised that I don't think Bill answered, which would be really helpful in understanding these numbers:

1. How are pre-season injuries factored in? For example, did the Giants lose 16 games on the D-line when Osi went down for the season?

2. How are "starters" determined? Bill's comments about the Baltimore D-line seem to indicate that this is based solely (or at least mostly) on 2007 starts, regardless of 2007 injuries, though to me this makes no sense. (e.g., is Anthony Gonzalez listed as the 2008 starter over Marvin Harrison?)

Methinks the Steelers' special teams AGL does not include the torn ACL of long snapper Greg Warren after about half the season. Reserve punter Mitch Berger missed a couple of games, too. (I assume that an AGL of 16 can be fully attributed to Sepulveda missing the complete season, as you insinuate in the text.)

As a Bengals fan, seeing Cincinnati at the very bottom of the AGL list is at once encouraging and demoralizing. It means our ineptitude this past season might have been due to injuries more than anything else (I know it's unlikely, but a fan's got to hope, right?), but why on earth did we have so many?

How did Kansas City loose 21.4 games in the quarterback position in a 16 games season? Do they normally play more than one quarterback? Did they secretly make playoffs, won Superbowl and then played another 2.4 games in some secret location with some secret teams?

"It's also worth noting that Bill Belichick did not put Matt Cassel on the injury report once all season -- maybe that Tom Brady shoulder injury was serious after all. "

i'm really getting sick of this sort of stuff. Belichick is required by the NFL to put Brady on the injury report every week because he doesn't participate in certain drills. If a player is "withheld from practice" they must be put on the injury report. I expect better from you guys.

(now, preventing more shoulder damage is what he holds Brady out of the drills for)

When Bill Parcells went to Miami he would go in the locker room before the season started and talk about reducing injuries. He slammed that mentality into players heads and pushed for more conditioning. He made a commitment to it and it worked. He let players know that it was not acceptable to use injuries as an excuse. Now if your leg snaps your leg snaps, but players are often known for trying to sit out practice and ride that injury out.

There are also different programs you can use in the gym ( The redskins used HIT training) which requires less weight in the weight room and will keep you healthier than traditional weight lifting.

I do think that teams out of the playoff hunt do see more injuries because borderline injuried players have an excuse to throw in the towel, and also teams don't want to risk further damage to star players so they more or less allow it. Teams throw in the towel.

If you don't believe me, then why do players in all sports perform better during contract years, and worse AFTER they sign the big contract? Check out the injury history for guys in their final year of thier contract, vs guys int the first year of new contracts and see injuries go up dramatically.