Injury Prone Tag: What is it, who has it? (1 Viewer)

[Leonidas]

I don't think I've seen this consolidated anywhere...just discussed here and there within other topics.

Let's go with the theory that some players just are "injury prone". Some players stay healthy (the Roddy Whites and Chris Johnsons of the NFL). Some just don't (the Darren McFaddens).

WHY are these players getting hurt more frequently?

WHO are they?

Some names to start us off:

Darren McFadden

Ryan Mathews

Demarco Murray

Miles Austin

Hakeem Nicks

Rob Gronkowski

Danny Amendola

Disagreements with the above? Additions?

I suspect some disagreements on Amendola, Murray, and possibly Mathews. The type and nature of the injuries as well as how they happened is definitely a factor.

 

[Shutout]

Injury prone is a manufactured condition based on the bias of the beholder. If you own a player, like Percy Harvin, then he is not injury prone. He just got hurt. However, if you do NOT own a player, like Hakeem Nicks, then he is injury prone and untrustable and gets moved to people's "do not draft" list.

The fact that these two players have almost identical stats in terms of games played, yardage, and the fact that Nicks has actually been more productive in terms of TDs is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the outcome.

THere is a mutated form of this condition called "Fisherman's syndrome" in which the bias is controlled by the fact that aperson does NOT own a player and labels them as injury-prone for the sole purpose of driving the player's perceived value down so that they can, in turn, obtain the player and then proclaim them cured and no longer injury prone. THis set of circumstances is referred to in the community as "pulling the shark move".

 

[Leonidas]

Injury prone is a manufactured condition based on the bias of the beholder. If you own a player, like Percy Harvin, then he is not injury prone. He just got hurt. However, if you do NOT own a player, like Hakeem Nicks, then he is injury prone and untrustable and gets moved to people's "do not draft" list.

The fact that these two players have almost identical stats in terms of games played, yardage, and the fact that Nicks has actually been more productive in terms of TDs is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the outcome.

THere is a mutated form of this condition called "Fisherman's syndrome" in which the bias is controlled by the fact that aperson does NOT own a player and labels them as injury-prone for the sole purpose of driving the player's perceived value down so that they can, in turn, obtain the player and then proclaim them cured and no longer injury prone. THis set of circumstances is referred to in the community as "pulling the shark move".

Do you have Darren McFadden in your top 10?

 

[Shutout]

Injury prone is a manufactured condition based on the bias of the beholder. If you own a player, like Percy Harvin, then he is not injury prone. He just got hurt. However, if you do NOT own a player, like Hakeem Nicks, then he is injury prone and untrustable and gets moved to people's "do not draft" list.

The fact that these two players have almost identical stats in terms of games played, yardage, and the fact that Nicks has actually been more productive in terms of TDs is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the outcome.

THere is a mutated form of this condition called "Fisherman's syndrome" in which the bias is controlled by the fact that aperson does NOT own a player and labels them as injury-prone for the sole purpose of driving the player's perceived value down so that they can, in turn, obtain the player and then proclaim them cured and no longer injury prone. THis set of circumstances is referred to in the community as "pulling the shark move".

Do you have Darren McFadden in your top 10?

My top 10 RB? No. I like these guys better (PPR)

Charles

Peterson

Foster

McCoy

Forte

Spiller

Martin

Richardson

Rice

Lynch/Morris

That list has nothing to do with anything more than I just like all those guys better for 2013.

 

[Gawain]

It'd be interesting to see one of the guys who are good at stats pull the numbers and actually perform analysis.

You could try to determine in a season X number of starting running backs suffer career ending injuries, Y number suffer season ending injuries and Z number suffer injuries that cause them to miss one or more games.

Then compare that to the total number of running backs in the league. If 8 running backs suffer injuries that cause them to miss one or more games, then we would expect 2 running backs to suffer injuries that cause them to miss one or more games in back-to-back seasons. Murray may have just been randomly unlucky, instead of being injury prone. There would have to be a control for pre-existing injuries, but I tend to think that most "injury-prone" players are little more than statistical noise.

Like SSOG says, Matt Stafford was injury prone, until he wasn't. Andre Johnson was injury prone, until he wasn't. It's important not to let random variance cause you to conclude causation.

 

[FantasyTrader]

No way to quantify it. I do think there are some players predisposed to injury based on genetics, but good luck ever defining it.

 

[Anarchy99]

I will lead the charge on Amendola not being (by my definition) injury prone. IMO, someone who is injury prone is someone that a) has a million and one injuries for an extended timeframe over and over again or b) has very common football related injuries multiple times.

In the first case, I would consider a broader amount of injuries. Take Gronk for example. He's had ankle surgery, multiple back surgeries, a broken arm with multiple surgeries, and generally has had a lot of health concerns overall. Just because he did not miss a lot of playing time DOES NOT give him a free pass as I see it.

The second category would involve someone like Aaron Hernandez (obviously pre Scarface days). He had repeated knee, hip, ankle, hamstring, concussion, etc. injuries over pretty much every year he was in the league. Those types of injuries seem to be nagging ones that are hard to shake and can really stunt someone's production over the course of a season.

Amendola had two major and freaky injuries that for the most part I have not heard of anyone else suffering from before or after. (That doesn't mean they never happened before, I just haven't heard of anyone that had the same injuries). It does not sound like wither of his injuries is likely to happen again, they won't increase his likelihood of other injuries, and they were one time events. He has not suffered many, if any, traditional football related injuries.

Unfortunately for Amendola, his two major injuries happened in the first week or two of the season, which destroyed an entire year and most of another. Had they happened in Week 17 and he had the entire off season to rest and recover, no one would be suggesting Amendola is an injury risk. From what I can tell, he was not injured or had health issues in college.

Maybe it will turn out that he will move on to the more traditional sports and football related injuries, but as far as I am concerned, he has avoided those so far (knock on wood). I'm willing to pass off his two injuries to being really freaky things that happened and did not leave any after effects. But some people are making it out that he should be booking a room at Mass General Hospital now because he won't be on the field by October.

 

[Dr. Octopus]

Let's go with the theory that some players just are "injury prone".

So you want to start with a false premise?

 

[Dr. Octopus]

Do you have Darren McFadden in your top 10?

I do, based on projections, but wouldn't have to draft him there of course. I have the No. 3 pick so since I don't have him top 3 I'd need to wait anyway - but his ADP is likely late 3rd or 4th anway - because people believe in "injury prone".

I will say certain players may be more susceptible to injury because they seek a lot of contact when they run, like Murray, Ivory or Lynch - but any RB is "injury prone" in that its a violent position and all it takes is a blow to the head, a knee planted too firmly before getting hit or a rolled on ankle to miss a few games.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

I looked at this a few years ago and didn't find much.

It's probaly not provable, but now I think that the sample I used for that study (only RBs with a top 25 finish) may be cutting out most injury prone guys and that backs with poor vision are likely to get injured more often. Which makes intuitive sense as well -- good vision gets you out of the way of big hits. But for the most part backs with lousy vision don't put top-25 finishes.

I also suspect that taller backs are at greater risk, but when I tried to isolate height as the only explanation and cut everyone else out of the study I ended up with a sample of only ten or so -- ~half tall, ~half not. In that group the tall backs were certainly hurt more often, but it's only ten guys. So it's still just a suspicion.

 

[Shutout]

Injury prone is a manufactured condition based on the bias of the beholder. If you own a player, like Percy Harvin, then he is not injury prone. He just got hurt. However, if you do NOT own a player, like Hakeem Nicks, then he is injury prone and untrustable and gets moved to people's "do not draft" list.

The fact that these two players have almost identical stats in terms of games played, yardage, and the fact that Nicks has actually been more productive in terms of TDs is irrelevant and has nothing to do with the outcome.

THere is a mutated form of this condition called "Fisherman's syndrome" in which the bias is controlled by the fact that aperson does NOT own a player and labels them as injury-prone for the sole purpose of driving the player's perceived value down so that they can, in turn, obtain the player and then proclaim them cured and no longer injury prone. THis set of circumstances is referred to in the community as "pulling the shark move".

The other side of this argument are the owners that own these players and value them higher than they should by pointing to their "good" numbers, even after missing a few games. They then proclaim that they're a top 3 player once they put together a complete season. Even though they have yet to do so. But there's always next year!

It is clearly ALL relative and I think that was my point. It was a bit tongue-in-cheek but it is true. We all do this, relative to our biases (investments) in the player.

 

[Dr. Octopus]

I looked at this a few years ago and didn't find much.

It's probaly not provable, but now I think that the sample I used for that study (only RBs with a top 25 finish) may be cutting out most injury prone guys and that backs with poor vision are likely to get injured more often. Which makes intuitive sense as well -- good vision gets you out of the way of big hits. But for the most part backs with lousy vision don't put top-25 finishes.

I also suspect that taller backs are at greater risk, but when I tried to isolate height as the only explanation and cut everyone else out of the study I ended up with a sample of only ten or so -- ~half tall, ~half not. In that group the tall backs were certainly hurt more often, but it's only ten guys. So it's still just a suspicion.

This all makes sense. I do think some players contribue to their bad luck, even if I think injuries often come down to just plain bad luck.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

FWIW, if I take only drafted backs over 72" who have a poor receiving metric (my own thing) and ran a sub 4.70 I get this list (alpha order):

Anthony Thomas
Brandon Jacobs
Cedric Humes
Chris Brown
Chris Wells
Daniel Thomas
Eric Shelton
Greg Jones
James Starks
Kevin Jones
Kevin Smith
Le'Veon Bell
Musa Smith
T.J. Duckett
Tim Hightower
Toby Gerhart

There's no way to prove this, but I think my receiving metric approximates open-field vision -- at least for backs with good physical tools. The idea being that when you throw the ball to a RB you're getting him into space. And if he's got NFL quality size/speed/quickness he should be able to do something with that space against NCAA competition. So the ones that can't do something with that space advantage fail to do so because they don't have the vision to translate their physical tools and room in the open-field into production.

And poor vision translates into bigger, more damaging hits.

I'm sure that there are NCAA players who are in terrible offenses relative to the competition (Zac Stacy?) or horrible offensive schemes where that interpretation doesn't work to explain a poor receiving metric. But on average I think it's roughly right.

Regardless of what I'm measuring, height + poor receiving metric usually means bad things. Many of the players on that list were decent rushers who weren't just injured a lot, but actually had their careers ended early by injury.

There are far more shorter players who've been good or very good with a poor receiving measures, but finding the "right" list of shorter players to compare these players to is pretty damn hard so feel free to discount everything above if you're not convinced.

But I'm going to stay away from players in that category regardless of where they're drafted.

 

[butcher boy]

Why do people have a hard time believing that some players are more prone to get hurt? Just because injuries are commonly a fluky thing that can't always be predicted doesn't mean that some players aren't more likely to get hurt.

The following reasons that could contribute to someone being injury prone are taken from a recent Jene Bramel article on this site:

• A player with a smaller frame, greater than average laxity in his joints, or less than average tendon flexibility
• A player with poorer strength, poorer conditioning, or less endurance than his competition.
• A player with below-average bone density or differences in the microscopic makeup of his connective tissue
• A player with poor biomechanics or technique, especially when performing repetitive motions
• A player with poorer reaction time or slower neuromuscular processing speed
• A player more willing to take chances or put himself in a position to be injured
• A player who has had repeated injuries to the same area (e.g. scar tissue, cartilage loss, overuse syndromes)
• A player more willing to play through pain that limits his conditioning, flexibility, reaction time, etc

I'm no doctor, but these all seem like valid reasons why someone might be more prone to get hurt.

The challenge is in identifying players that fit into these categories. All we really have to go by is history. Somebody getting hurt once doesn't make him injury prone, but multiple injuries, inability to play a 16 game schedule in consecutive years, will all make me put an asterisk by a guy's name. It's a label that a player earns over time, and IMO they don't shed this label until I see a 16 game season.

 

[Leonidas]

I don't think I've seen this consolidated anywhere...just discussed here and there within other topics.

Let's go with the theory that some players just are "injury prone". Some players stay healthy (the Roddy Whites and Chris Johnsons of the NFL). Some just don't (the Darren McFaddens).

WHY are these players getting hurt more frequently?

WHO are they?

Some names to start us off:

Darren McFadden

Ryan Mathews

Demarco Murray

Miles Austin

Hakeem Nicks

Rob Gronkowski

Danny Amendola

Disagreements with the above? Additions?

I suspect some disagreements on Amendola, Murray, and possibly Mathews. The type and nature of the injuries as well as how they happened is definitely a factor.

Looks like it's "one down" already.

McHurt appears to be hurt again