Post by Funkytown on Feb 3, 2018 11:55:44 GMT -6
What Does 'Injury-Prone' Mean in the NFL? by Zach Binney
More at the link: www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2018/what-does-injury-prone-mean-nfl
We see the phrase all the time. In the draft. In free agency. In fantasy evaluations. It's always a variation on a theme: "He's a great player, but he's injury-prone." The label is thrown around with ease, but rarely has anyone tried to quantify what it might actually mean in terms of injury risk.
In order to do that, we first need to turn "injury-prone" into something we can approach analytically. When people say "injury-prone," they mean they're concerned that a player's injury history places them at a higher risk for future injury. That's something we can look at -- indeed, previous injury is a well-known risk factor for future injuries that has been heavily studied in sports injury literature.
To see if a prior injury history puts a player at greater future risk, we calculated the one-season risk of missing one or more regular season games due to injury for player-seasons with various two-year injury histories. All injuries occurring in the offseason, preseason, or regular season were counted towards a player's two-year history. We used injuries from only the previous two years to ensure all players had the same amount of time to accumulate an injury history, and because injuries in the distant past may not be as indicative of future risk. We excluded a player's first two NFL seasons because he would not have yet accumulated a two-year NFL injury history. We also excluded player-seasons where the player did not play in the team's Week 1 game but was not on injured reserve for all 16 weeks, as these players may not have been at risk for a full season.
This left us with 8,585 player-seasons between 2009 and 2016. Forty percent of these player-seasons included at least one game missed due to injury.
Any Injury History
On average, 40 percent of players who played or would have played in Week 1 missed at least one game due to injury that season. Among those with no reported injuries in the prior two seasons, though, that figure is just 26 percent.
The risk of missing time increases rapidly with a longer injury history. Thirty-five percent, 41 percent, and 46 percent of players with one, two, or three injuries in the prior two years miss time in their upcoming season, respectively. As injury histories get very long (six or more total injuries in the previous two seasons), risks flatten out at around 55 or 60 percent.
Players with the longest injury histories have twice the risk of missing time as those with a completely clean bill over the previous two seasons. However, even a player with five injuries in two seasons has a 50/50 chance of at least suiting up for all 16 games his next season. Does a 50 percent chance of missing time make a player "injury-prone?" They are certainly more injury-prone on average than players with a shorter injury history, but it's important to consider their actual risks. Teams need to understand as precisely as they can the additional risk they might be taking on by drafting or signing a guy with a lengthy injury history rather than just saying "ah, forget him, he's injury-prone."
In order to do that, we first need to turn "injury-prone" into something we can approach analytically. When people say "injury-prone," they mean they're concerned that a player's injury history places them at a higher risk for future injury. That's something we can look at -- indeed, previous injury is a well-known risk factor for future injuries that has been heavily studied in sports injury literature.
To see if a prior injury history puts a player at greater future risk, we calculated the one-season risk of missing one or more regular season games due to injury for player-seasons with various two-year injury histories. All injuries occurring in the offseason, preseason, or regular season were counted towards a player's two-year history. We used injuries from only the previous two years to ensure all players had the same amount of time to accumulate an injury history, and because injuries in the distant past may not be as indicative of future risk. We excluded a player's first two NFL seasons because he would not have yet accumulated a two-year NFL injury history. We also excluded player-seasons where the player did not play in the team's Week 1 game but was not on injured reserve for all 16 weeks, as these players may not have been at risk for a full season.
This left us with 8,585 player-seasons between 2009 and 2016. Forty percent of these player-seasons included at least one game missed due to injury.
Any Injury History
On average, 40 percent of players who played or would have played in Week 1 missed at least one game due to injury that season. Among those with no reported injuries in the prior two seasons, though, that figure is just 26 percent.
The risk of missing time increases rapidly with a longer injury history. Thirty-five percent, 41 percent, and 46 percent of players with one, two, or three injuries in the prior two years miss time in their upcoming season, respectively. As injury histories get very long (six or more total injuries in the previous two seasons), risks flatten out at around 55 or 60 percent.
Players with the longest injury histories have twice the risk of missing time as those with a completely clean bill over the previous two seasons. However, even a player with five injuries in two seasons has a 50/50 chance of at least suiting up for all 16 games his next season. Does a 50 percent chance of missing time make a player "injury-prone?" They are certainly more injury-prone on average than players with a shorter injury history, but it's important to consider their actual risks. Teams need to understand as precisely as they can the additional risk they might be taking on by drafting or signing a guy with a lengthy injury history rather than just saying "ah, forget him, he's injury-prone."
More at the link: www.footballoutsiders.com/stat-analysis/2018/what-does-injury-prone-mean-nfl
... and neither is this Chris guy.