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Strength & Conditioning - Injury Analysis for 2018

Packer_ESP

By Packer_ESP
in Green Bay Packers

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Packer_ESP

Packer_ESP

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Recent discussion in the draft thread (and in many other threads for the last few months) had us questioning whether the Packers are more injured than the NFL average or not, particularly when it comes to soft tissue injuries. My stance on this was that it's probably sheer luck but I wanted to gather some data on it. The first exercise I did was check the official NFL injury reports week by week, counting the number of hamstring injuries in each team. Please keep in mind that I counted the number of injuries without looking at the player so, in this count, a player injured for three weeks is the same as three players injured for one week. 

PHI	22
MIN	19
HOU	19
GB	18
BAL	16
JAC	16
DAL	14
NE	14
TB	12
SF	12
IND	11
KC	11
WAS	8
ARI	8
SEA	8
CHI	7
CIN	7
CLE	7
BUF	7
OAK	7
DET	4
NYG	4
NYJ	4
TEN	4
LAC	4
ATL	3
CAR	3
PIT	2
MIA	2
NO	1
LAR	0
DEN	0
  • Standard deviation: 5
  • Mean: 8.5625
  • Median: 7

We're two standard deviations above the mean which is a lot higher than I expected. Also, I thought the count would be a lot more similar between teams - I did not expect any teams with zero hamstrings for the whole year. I don't know if we should draw any conclusions from teams like LAR and NO (the strongest teams in the NFL) being so low on this count since there are a multitude of other injuries that aren't included in this analysis.

Later today I will try to download all the injury reports to a single spreadsheet so I can do some more number crunching such as counting the injured players instead of weeks (I suspect Cobb and King penalized us greatly in this analysis), percentage of injured players per team, evolution of injuries per week, etc.

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Packer_ESP

Packer_ESP

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I've continued the analysis and I've generated a spreadsheet with all the injury report information for 2018. These are a few metrics that I've obtained per team:

HPE1ci2.jpg

A brief explanation for each number:

  • Injury weeks counts the total number of injury report lines for the team. For example, Player A out for 4 weeks with one injury and 3 with another counts as 7.
    • Total: total injury weeks
    • Out: counts only players that were "Out". Other designations (Questionable, Doubtful) are not counted even if the player did not play since checking each one individually is way too much work.
    • Soft: counts only soft tissue injuries. I'm not a physician plus English is not my first language so I might have messed up but I counted these injuries: abdomen, achilles, biceps, calf, groin, hamstring, oblique, pectoral, quadricep, shoulder, thigh, triceps. I wasn't sure about shoulder but included it anyway.
  • Injuries: counts the different player + injury combinations for each team. Same example as above would count as two. NOTE: it could very well happen that one player has the same injury twice in the season - however, other than following each case individually I don't think there's a clear cut way to discriminate that. For example, would the same injury in weeks 4 and 6 count as one or two? What about 4 and 7? Where do we draw the limit?
    • Total: total player injuries for each team
    • Soft: same but filtered for soft tissue injuries as above
  • Players: counts the different players that have been on the injury report for each team. Same example as above would count as one.
  • All ranks are from better to worse - lower rank means fewer injuries.

We look pretty bad in all ranks except the "Out" players, which I guess means we've been playing nicked players a lot. Unsurprisingly, Rams and Saints rank close to the top in all categories.

Since I still have the raw data, if anyone wants some specific data (by injury, by position, whatever) please feel free to request it and I'll do my best to post it. If anyone is interested in the file let me know and I'll upload it to Google Files, though I don't know if all features will be compatible, maybe I'll have to upload just the raw data. You can also PM me an email address and I'll send you the Excel file.

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coachbuns

coachbuns

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1 hour ago, Packer_ESP said:

I've continued the analysis and I've generated a spreadsheet with all the injury report information for 2018. These are a few metrics that I've obtained per team:

HPE1ci2.jpg

A brief explanation for each number:

  • Injury weeks counts the total number of injury report lines for the team. For example, Player A out for 4 weeks with one injury and 3 with another counts as 7.
    • Total: total injury weeks
    • Out: counts only players that were "Out". Other designations (Questionable, Doubtful) are not counted even if the player did not play since checking each one individually is way too much work.
    • Soft: counts only soft tissue injuries. I'm not a physician plus English is not my first language so I might have messed up but I counted these injuries: abdomen, achilles, biceps, calf, groin, hamstring, oblique, pectoral, quadricep, shoulder, thigh, triceps. I wasn't sure about shoulder but included it anyway.
  • Injuries: counts the different player + injury combinations for each team. Same example as above would count as two. NOTE: it could very well happen that one player has the same injury twice in the season - however, other than following each case individually I don't think there's a clear cut way to discriminate that. For example, would the same injury in weeks 4 and 6 count as one or two? What about 4 and 7? Where do we draw the limit?
    • Total: total player injuries for each team
    • Soft: same but filtered for soft tissue injuries as above
  • Players: counts the different players that have been on the injury report for each team. Same example as above would count as one.
  • All ranks are from better to worse - lower rank means fewer injuries.

We look pretty bad in all ranks except the "Out" players, which I guess means we've been playing nicked players a lot. Unsurprisingly, Rams and Saints rank close to the top in all categories.

Since I still have the raw data, if anyone wants some specific data (by injury, by position, whatever) please feel free to request it and I'll do my best to post it. If anyone is interested in the file let me know and I'll upload it to Google Files, though I don't know if all features will be compatible, maybe I'll have to upload just the raw data. You can also PM me an email address and I'll send you the Excel file.

That is a job well done.  I've been a believer from the start that we just aren't snake bitten all the time. 

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Scoremore

Scoremore

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Yes excellent work.  Pretty much backs up what I have been seeing.  Ranked 30 out of 32 teams.  Just this year.  This AGL metric doesn't tell the story.  Bet going back over the past decade the data would be damning.  Thanks for this have been getting some blow back for bashing the training staff.

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Lieker

Lieker

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Great stuff. It would be interesting to look at how many starters each team lost vs backups/role players. This season it felt like we lost a bunch of our starters, especially on defense. Wilkerson, Daniels, Ryan, Perry, King have all missed major chunks of the season. Offensively we have Cobb, Allison, McCray, all missing chunks as well. 

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Scoremore

Scoremore

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4 minutes ago, OneTwoSixFive said:

Lest we forget, early in the season the Packers looked amazingly healthy. Later on, not so much.

Well not really.  Rodgers got injured in the very first game.  Thought our season was over at half time.  ESP just did this one season.  Look at the results.  Pretty damning.  Nothing new though.  Ongoing theme for the past decade.  Don't you ever get sick of our seasons being derailed by injuries 1265?  I mean every fricken year.  Remember the debate about Capers.  Oh for about 3 years I defended him because half of the D was out with injuries.  Was it injuries or Capers?  This is nothing new.  Surprised so many are willing to accept it as just bad luck.  It's been a pattern.  

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Packer_ESP

Packer_ESP

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Thanks all, it's been a bit of work yes but at least I feel like I can contribute, I'm not hoping to post film breakdown anytime soon lol.

56 minutes ago, Scoremore said:

Yes excellent work.  Pretty much backs up what I have been seeing.  Ranked 30 out of 32 teams.  Just this year.  This AGL metric doesn't tell the story.  Bet going back over the past decade the data would be damning.  Thanks for this have been getting some blow back for bashing the training staff.

I actually started this exercise to refute your posts in the draft thread, but it turned out different to what I expected. I still would not discount the AGL metric since it also takes into account the importance of the player - in my post, Rodgers missing one week counts the same as Will Redmond missing a game. I'm definitely more concerned now though, injury disparity across the league is a lot higher than I thought so perhaps there are some things we're not doing correctly. Still, we've had some pretty healthy years too, so I don't have a definite stance yet.

43 minutes ago, Lieker said:

Great stuff. It would be interesting to look at how many starters each team lost vs backups/role players. This season it felt like we lost a bunch of our starters, especially on defense. Wilkerson, Daniels, Ryan, Perry, King have all missed major chunks of the season. Offensively we have Cobb, Allison, McCray, all missing chunks as well. 

I think AGL would be better for that since I don't know 90% of the players on my raw data table. Maybe I could cross the list with a snap count or something to assign some weight to each injury, though that would devalue year long injuries. I would also need to add IR players which are not accounted for in my data.

 

39 minutes ago, OneTwoSixFive said:

Lest we forget, early in the season the Packers looked amazingly healthy. Later on, not so much.

See graph below.

28 minutes ago, Scoremore said:

Well not really.  Rodgers got injured in the very first game.  Thought our season was over at half time.  ESP just did this one season.  Look at the results.  Pretty damning.  Nothing new though.  Ongoing theme for the past decade.  Don't you ever get sick of our seasons being derailed by injuries 1265?  I mean every fricken year.  Remember the debate about Capers.  Oh for about 3 years I defended him because half of the D was out with injuries.  Was it injuries or Capers?  This is nothing new.  Surprised so many are willing to accept it as just bad luck.  It's been a pattern.  

z5qm03p.jpg

 

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coachbuns

coachbuns

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Just love the numbers provided by Packer ESP as I'm kind of a number cruncher. Tried to find something that sticks out from the numbers.  Indoor/warm weather teams vs cold weather/outside teams which could provide some insight for strains/pulls/tears.  Indy was overall the highest injured team followed by  Green Bay,  Philly, Baltimore and Miami as they were  listed in all 3 of the categories.  #1 and #5 were warm weather/indoor teams with other 3 outside/colder weather teams.  The next 3 teams had 2 categories rated and were:  San Francisco, then NE followed by Jacksonville.  Last 3 teams in most injured players category were Detroit with Washington and Arizona tied.  What else can it be?  Bad luck (for the Packers, year after year), training methods, over muscled athletes ... what?   

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