Another Injury Study

I'm not sure how well this translates to football, but

A pitcher’s shoulder joint can rotate as quickly as 7,000 degrees per second—nearly 20 complete revolutions in one second if the shoulder could rotate completely freely—during a pitch, making it one of the fastest movements possible by the body, and this repetitive motion of the arm contributes to the fatigue-related injuries. Ian Byram and his colleagues at Vanderbilt Medical Center are hoping to reduce the damage by identifying pitchers at risk for injury during the preseason, allowing teams to design unique strength training routines for susceptible athletes.

Okay, mostly this is posted for the coolness of the topic. I'm not sure what kind of repetitive stress footballers have to deal with, other than repetitive 30mph body-body collisions (a malady that strength training is unlikely to remedy). Mostly though, I'm interested in how aggressively sports medicine is attacking these questions.

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More On Injuries

I did find the injury report for week 17 at WalterFootball and it reveals a lot of interesting information.

First , let's look at playoff teams versus non-playoff teams. This isn't quite apples-apples because teams that had no shot in week 17 were more likely to stash any player who was out for the game on IR whereas the playoff hopefuls had to keep their options open. But even so, I believe we can spot some trends.

Playoff team                  Number of Players on IR         Significant players
Arizona                                  4                             0
Atlanta                                  7                             0
Baltimore                               18                             6
Carolina                                 3                             1
Indianapolis                             8                             2
Miami                                    4                             1
Minnesota                                9                             2
New York                                 9                             1
Philadelphia                             4                             1
Pittsburgh                               7                             3
San Diego                                3                             1
Tennessee                                4                             0

Non-Playoff Team
Buffalo                                  8                             3
Chicago                                  9                             5
Cincinnati                              18                             5
Cleveland                               11                             5
Dallas                                   7                             3
Denver                                  14                             5
Detroit                                 15                             6
Green Bay                               10                             3
Houston                                 12                             4
Jacksonville                            13                             7
Kansas City                              6                             3
New England                             15                             6
New Orleans                             18                             7
New York                                 4                             0
Oakland                                 13                             2
San Francisco                            5                             1
Seattle                                 12                             8
St. Louis                               12                             6
Tampa Bay                                6                             1
Washington                               6                             3

The dichotomy between these two lists is striking. It appears that the secret to making the playoffs is merely remaining healthy? Really? Well the argument can be made.

Other than Baltimore, no playoff team had double digit numbers on the IR or more than three "significant" (ie regular starters) on the list. While there was a bit more spread among non-playoff teams, we can see that 12 of the 20 teams that fell short had 10 or more players on IR, 11 teams had more than 3 significant players. Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, New England, San Francisco and Seattle all lost their starting quarterbacks for the year. All but New England had losing records and picked in the top ten.

There are a lot of ways to pursue this data further, for one thing: predictability. It seems apparent that Arizona, Miami, Philadelphia, Carolina, Tennessee and Atlanta enjoyed unusually good luck, we expect a return to normalcy and many fewer wins. On the other hand, New England, New Orleans, and Seattle had unusually bad luck. We expect more wins out of those teams - a scary prospect in the case of New England.

And now for the outliers. In the case of non-playoff teams the future looks a little bleak for New York, Kansas City, San Francisco, Tampa Bay and Washington. They can all be expected to suffer a greater injury rate and poorer seasons, a particularly depressing thought for Chief fans.

It would be a little more informative if we could compare this to average team age but that data is difficult to find. There was a study done last year and I've found partial results:

Youngest ....   Oldest                      IR
1.   Kansas City      25.6                   6
1.   Green Bay        25.6                  10
3.   Indianapolis                            8
4.   Cincinnati                             18
5.   Miami                                   4
6.   Buffalo                                 8
.
.
.
11.  San Diego                               3
.
.
.
28.  New England                            15
29.  Detroit                                15
30.  St. Louis                              12
31.  Washington                              6
32.  New Orleans                            18

Okay, this tells a good story too. Old teams get hurt a lot more often (and a double whammy to Redskin fans. With a healthy Carson Palmer and a normal injury rate we should expect tremendous improvement from Cincinnati. This also ties into my long-held belief that champions are young, or at least not old. None of the bottom five teams on this list made the playoffs.

And of course we can also see from this list that dark days remain for St. Louis and Detroit. Old and awful is a bad combination.

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Jacobs: Romo Isn't That Good

In a fun interview on ESPN 1050 New York Brandon Tierney gave Brandon Jacobs the right rope.

Tony Romo? Are you a Tony Romo guy? Do you think he's good?

No I’m not a Tony Romo guy, I think he’s alright. His luck will be gone sooner or later.

It’s something he can’t sustain. I think … if you were to keep Tony Romo in the pocket he’s not that effective. That’s what I think. But you let him run around and you have the linebackers and everyone think ‘is he gonna run? Is he gonna pass? Then I think he’s effective, because he is athletic and he can run. And he can beat you there. But if you keep him in the pocket I don’t think he can get you from the pocket. I don’t think he’s that great a passer, to be honest with you.

Okay, so this is really a great quote. But it there may be a lot of underlying truth to it. Romo's records in games against good defenses is pretty sketchy, particularly when the season is on the line. Looking at the last four games of '08 with Dallas on the playoff bubble, the team went 1-3 while Romo went a combined 84/150/889/5/6 for a composite 68 passer rating. This doesn't really describe the whole story though, in the one win against the Giants Romo was brilliant, posting a 114 rating despite four sacks. If anything though, this performance makes the other three even more incriminating. Needing one win, Romo posted a composite 56 rating in the three losses, as a point of comparison, Detroit's five quarterbacks had a 71 rating in their sixteen losses. 56 is just bad, bad, bad.

A couple of years ago the pundits argued that Romo would learn from his playoff gaffe/loss against the Seahawks. Maybe he did, but since that time he became embroiled in a very public and distracting affair with Jessica Simpson while laying another egg in the playoffs against the Giants, blowing Dallas' top seed. In two of his last three games that year he posted ratings of 22 and 35, even while Dallas was tuning up for their playoff run.

Romo clearly can play a bit. He obviously has skill, can make things happen, can generate excitement. But at this point in his career it is absolutely legitimate to question whether the guy can ever be a winner. He isn't like Peyton Manning who would carry his team to the playoffs annually only to lose somewhere along the way. This Dallas team is loaded and really has no excuses not to be the best team in the conference.

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How the hell - ?

How the hell did Philip Rivers not go to the Pro Bowl last year???

What's a guy gotta do? He led the league in TD passes (tie) and in passer rating (by a lot); 2nd in his conference in passing yards. He led the league in yards-per-attempt (excluding guys who attempted fewer than 40 passes on the season).

And he sits at home behind Kerry Collins (of the 12 TD passes) and Brett Favre (of the 22 INTs)??

Ridonkulous.

Pro Bowl rosters should be selected after the end of the season, end of story.

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Dysfunctional? Nope. Not the Cowboys.

I love this.

DeMarcus Ware comes off the field just so I can get in the game and when the coaches tell him to come on the field, he tries to hide so I can play," Ellis said on Irvin's show. "And you're telling me we're trying to win the Super Bowl?"

~

During the interview Wednesday, Irvin asked Ellis to clarify his statement that Ware would take himself out of games.

"On his own. He would say, 'G, come on.' And I would tell him, 'No, DeMarcus, go ahead, man. You're coming up on your contract year. Don't mess that stuff up. Go ahead and do you, and we're just going to do what the coaches, or whoever the powers that be, what they want to do.'"

What the effity eff? The best defensive player in football hides from the coaching staff so some barely adequate DE can get a few snaps. The bizarre thing is that Ellis doesn't seem to think that there was anything wrong with Ware's behavior, that the fault lay with the coaches. I guess he has a point to the extent that the coaches probably should have cut Ellis rather than deal with that kind of distraction.

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Modeling For Injury Tendencies

As a natural extension of the Moneyball concept, Stan Conte of the Los Angeles Dodgers is attempting to build an algorithm to predict injury rates among ballplayers.

The ability to predict how players’ bodies will fare is a holy grail. With an actuarial approach, Conte seems to have a head start in the pursuit. He is trying to build a formula that will give teams a competitive advantage and help them avoid players who spend their days in the training room and not on the field.

“The insurance industry has made millions of dollars off figuring out how, when, where and why people are going to die, and we are trying to figure those things out about injuries,” Conte said.

Every major league team and scores of independent analysts are trying to understand why injuries strike certain players. But Conte said his effort was more advanced because his data has been compiled over 15 years as a trainer for the San Francisco Giants and now the Dodgers. He has had hands-on interaction with hundreds of players before and after their injuries, and his observations and medical records inform his hypotheses.

Conte also draws on the analytical prowess of David Zes and Adam Sugano, statisticians who teach at U.C.L.A., and Matt Marks, an employee in the Dodgers’ baseball operations department. They are building mathematical formulas that they hope will show the chances a player will be injured within the next season.

Okay, I will be the first to admit that I'm not exactly sure how this applies to the NFL. Not because I don't think it is valid, but rather because I expect that teams are already doing this, at least to some extent.

What I find particularly interesting though, and what probably ties directly in, is that some teams seem to tend toward fewer injuries than others, particularly at the extremes. We already know that at draft time players are selected for injury history. In most cases a significant collegiate or high school injury will cause draft stock to drop - or plummet - depending on its severity and likelihood to impact performance.

Some things we already know pretty well. Running backs are very likely to experience dramatic dropoffs in performance after seasons of heavy use; the rule of 370 coined by the Football Outsiders. We know that concussions progressively debiliate health and increase in likelihood. Exhibit A is Trent Green, but concussions also forced Steve Young from the game while still near his peak.

Other factors though are less clear. Is it really just luck that teams like the Ravens and Chargers tend to escape injury devastation annually, while teams like the Lions lead the league in players on IR every year? It is doubtful that this is mere coincidence. Is the key in player selection? Conditioning? Are there blocking and tackling techniques that reduce injury risk that some teams employ and others don't?

As a matter of public health I would love to see this explored openly. But then, I would love to see it explored openly period. It's a fascinating subject.

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Is McNair Hall of Fame worthy?

This is probably as good a question for last year as it is now, but his death obviously will get people talking about it. So let's discuss here.

McNair was a consistenly very good QB, and one of the toughest to play the game at least in the past 20 years. Steve Young was about as tough, I think; but I can't particularly think of any that might qualify as being tougher than McNair was. Constantly injured, the guy pushed through and played great football, up until his final season, with one "hiccup" year in 2004.

But was he really a Hall of Fame QB? In the 11 seasons after being named the primary starter for his teams, he averaged around 2,700 yards passing, 15 TDs, and 10 INTs. He threw for under 7 YPA, his QB rating was under 83 and he had three seasons of double digit fumbles while amassing 99 in total. He never threw for more than 24 TDs in a single season. He only had an 85+ QB rating in two of his 11 seasons after being named the starter. And he never topped 230 avg yards per game.

Let's look in comparison to another very good QB, who's been a starter for 8 seasons:
Avg 2,900 yards, 18 TDs, 12 INTs, 7 YPA, less than 40 total fumbles, avg QB rating of 84.5. Max TDs thrown of 28, four starting seasons with a > 85 QB rating, and three seasons with over 240 avg YPG.
Is Matt Hasselbeck a Hall of Fame QB? I'd argue clearly not.

But there are more arguments than just the passing numbers that indicate McNair could be more worthy than Hasselbeck. For one, he seemed to me to be the prototype for the rushing QB (save maybe Steve Young). He was great at it, but he didn't do it so often that it hurt him in the passing game. Over 3,500 rushing yards and 37 rushing TDs, it actually lifts his per game avg to almost 220 yards and a bit over 18 TDs. For six straight years he rushed for over 300 yards, and in five of those he rushed for over 400.

He was named to 3 Pro Bowls, and won a league MVP in one year. He never came really close to repeating his 2003 production, but that season truly was a great one for him. He amassed a 91-62 record (.595 winning percentage), and was one yard from winning a Superbowl.

Then again, his post-season numbers weren't all that great. Rushing he was solid as usual. But he had nearly a 2:1 INT:TD ratio, completed under 60% of his throws, and had a QB rating under 70.

Add it all up and I think McNair belongs in the Hall of Very Good. But I don't think he's Hall of Fame worthy.

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Birk Speaks Out

Matt Birk, subbing for Peter King offers a refreshing perspective on the plight of NFL retirees instead of placing blame squarely on 'greedy owners' or 'selfish players' as we see so often. Instead Birk attempts to provide a balanced viewpoint, discussing the interests of both the players and the owners. Perhaps he has just reached an age where he is seeing the true costs of NFL injuries manifest themselves in friends and ex-teammates.

This bothers me because everyone associated with the NFL is making money. Under the current system, about two percent of the revenues being paid to players go toward retired players. So why can't we give a bigger piece of the pie to the players of yesteryear? Well, the owners pay a negotiated percentage of revenues to the players. They feel like they already give up enough.

~

In the NFL, where contracts are not guaranteed and everyone is one play away from a career-ending injury, I don't fault players for being focused on the present. But it's our responsibility to leave this game better than we found it. Players today should hope future generations will do the same for us. Every former player who suffers the effects of football-related injuries should have the basics -- food, shelter, clothing and medical care. This is the least we can do

As I see it, the problem is in the inequality in pay of players. It is easy for someone like Birk, a player who has been paid somewhere north of $10 million to call for current NFLers to contribute more to retirees. The fact though is that Birk represents a relative minority of NFLers. Most players never make a million dollars, with many bouncing from training camp to practice squads to a few weeks on the active roster at minimum salaries before outliving their usefulness. Probably a fun lifestyle, but ultimately not so much money that they would be excited about being taxed to support other players whose careers followed the same pattern.

There might be better solutions, but the only one that comes to mind for me is a taxation of signing bonuses/roster bonuses/etc., exempted for anything under $500k or so. Only a small fraction of players ever see bonuses greater than this amount so this would mean that the players who benefited the most from sacrifices of their predecessors would also contribute the most to their long term care.

Of course the cynic in me knows that all this would do is cause creative contract writing alongside invocations of socialist bogeymen.

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R.I.P. Steve McNair

Shocking and horrifying breaking news...there's very little out right now.

Former Tennessee Titans quarterback Steve McNair has been killed, a source has confirmed to ESPN.com.

McNair, police said, suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head in downtown Nashville, News Channel 5 in Nashville reported.

McNair played 13 seasons in the NFL, 11 were with the Tennessee Titans. He played his final two years with the Baltimore Ravens, retiring after the 2007 season.

I loved McNair not just as a Raven but also as a Titan. On top of being a great QB, he was the epitome of class. It's unfortunate he never won a Superbowl, but he was a fantastic player and a guy anyone could root for.

Tragic news for the NFL...

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Brandon Marshall Hates Denver

Apparently a police report has been released that indicates Marshall has wanted out of Denver for quite some time...

When the wideout/controversy-magnet was stopped in October 2007 for suspicion of a DUI, he apparently went on an anti-Denver tirade.

"I hate Denver. I hope I get traded. I hate this f****** city," an officer wrote in the police report.

The report was only made public after CALL7 Investigators asked for it, after receiving a tip about the report's content.

It's not hard to connect the dots on who could have made such a call to tip them off. I suppose it's possible an officer did, but more likely by far that Marshall dropped the tip. He clearly wants out of Denver and it would seem is upping the ante in this game.

There are two interesting dynamics at work here...

1) Getting back to my last post, how much do teams want to pay for a guy like this? He's a trouble-maker off the field, and now he's causing his team distress. You can't doubt his talent, but his nickname "Baby TO" seems to be more appropriate than ever right now. He'll get his money, particularly if he gets traded. But I'm starting to think the risk:reward ratio on this guy is simply way too high. That makes me think he's destined for a place like Washington, as opposed to a place like Baltimore. I think we all know what I'm saying there...

2) How much of a cluster-eff is Denver right now? I think there are two bets that I would take for as much money as humanly possible at this particular moment. First is that Pat Bowlen is crying himself to sleep on a nightly basis for firing Shanahan. McDaniel and Xander have been nothing but a giant nightmare so far. Second is that McDaniel better get out of the gate really fast this year, because if he doesn't, I don't think it will take Bowlen very long to pull the plug on this little experiment.

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