OT/On Topic injury's

[Sec-E4]

The odds of getting injured have to be greater if you're putting on weight and building muscle at a larger rate than what your/their body should be naturally. So the question is....Have players slowly been getting bigger, Say compared to 5 or so years ago ??? It seems like the past 3 years we've been seeing guys go down before TC even starts.

Albeit Melvin got hurt on a freakish/bad luck warm up..Didn't he run out of bounds and he hit someone on the side lines ?

[Lightningwill_420]

Not always true. After looking Ingram didn't have injuries in college and has missed more games than Mathews in their first three seasons. You just don't know.

You don't know. But, I'm guessing, if somebody compiled the data (and I haven't), we'd find that players who get hurt a lot in college are more apt to get hurt a lot in the pros than players who don't get hurt in college. I could be wrong though.

[KNSD]

Not always true. After looking Ingram didn't have injuries in college and has missed more games than Mathews in their first three seasons. You just don't know.

You don't know for a specific case, but you can have a good idea of what will happen on average.

[Steve]

Generally, the assertion that guys who get hurt a LOT in college are likely to get hurt in the pros. The catch is what does A LOT mean? IS there some threshold you have in mind? Is the timing important?

There are plenty of examples of guys who were healthy and never missed any time in college, yet never had a pro career because of injuries. Steve Entman, 1st pick for the Colts in 1987(?) being a good example. There are also examples of guys like Troy P who had a lot of injuries in college and went on to play well as pro players (and even had some injuries there too). There are cases where guys with some injuries don't get hurt again, and some who never got hurt in college, will get hurt once in a while as pro. As with anything, there is going to be a wide range of experiences.

But you are biasing yourself and likely to exclude a ton of good players who may have no issues at all if you just start throwing anyone who has ever had an injury out. Everyone I knew who has played organized football has had to play hurt. And it is sometimes a fine line between being hurt and injured.

Case studies are a horrible way to look at injuries, because there are so many specific factors that have to be analyzed. Unless you have some guess as to exactly what causes them. But presumably, the thing is to find the genetic or environmental causes to minimize the risk to the team. But unless there is some very specific medical information guiding that thinking, case studies won't tell you jack.

You would have to study the injuries and causes statistically. And even then, the data collected on injuries have to be the relevant things to analyze, otherwise you are not running the wrong associations. And you probably would need to run all the stats on an injury by injury case. Are broken fingers relevant? How about hyperextensions? Some injuries are more serious then others.

[Lightningwill_420]

Generally, the assertion that guys who get hurt a LOT in college are likely to get hurt in the pros. The catch is what does A LOT mean? IS there some threshold you have in mind? Is the timing important?

There are plenty of examples of guys who were healthy and never missed any time in college, yet never had a pro career because of injuries. Steve Entman, 1st pick for the Colts in 1987(?) being a good example. There are also examples of guys like Troy P who had a lot of injuries in college and went on to play well as pro players (and even had some injuries there too). There are cases where guys with some injuries don't get hurt again, and some who never got hurt in college, will get hurt once in a while as pro. As with anything, there is going to be a wide range of experiences.

But you are biasing yourself and likely to exclude a ton of good players who may have no issues at all if you just start throwing anyone who has ever had an injury out. Everyone I knew who has played organized football has had to play hurt. And it is sometimes a fine line between being hurt and injured.

Case studies are a horrible way to look at injuries, because there are so many specific factors that have to be analyzed. Unless you have some guess as to exactly what causes them. But presumably, the thing is to find the genetic or environmental causes to minimize the risk to the team. But unless there is some very specific medical information guiding that thinking, case studies won't tell you jack.

You would have to study the injuries and causes statistically. And even then, the data collected on injuries have to be the relevant things to analyze, otherwise you are not running the wrong associations. And you probably would need to run all the stats on an injury by injury case. Are broken fingers relevant? How about hyperextensions? Some injuries are more serious then others.

"Hurt a lot in college," to me, means missing games in more than one year or undergoing multiple surgeries due to injuries.
Broken fingers and hyper-extensions are relevant if they cause the player to miss games, undergo surgery, or play poorly.

I think we already had this argument before the draft. I was pleased, this year, the Chargers didn't draft or spend a lot of money on players who have a history of injuries. I expect our 2015 draft picks and Franklin will play more than our 2014 picks and Butler will.

[Sec-E4]

Troy Polamalu wouldn't be the best example on someone who was injury prone in College and came into the NFL and didn't get hurt to much

[Steve]

He is an excellent example of why it is a complicated issue and maybe you should not necessarily pass on guys because of the perception of injury history. I am not sure if you consider Troy injury prone or not. Again, part of my issue is that that label "injury prone" is incredibly subjective. Certainly for those of us with little medical background. I know NFL teams track players injury histories, so they must have a better feel for it then we do. Everyone I know who has played organized football at some level has some combination of hurts and/or minor injuries all the time, and not all of those would show up on an injury list.

The point is that at some point, you end up throwing out a lot of good players who may only have the PERCEPTION of problems with injuries, rather then a history that would suggest a real problem, based on past injury histories of other NFL guys. I think you would really have to study it before you can judge. I think EE#420 is setting the bar pretty high and would exclude a whole lot of players, some of who will go on to have excellent careers.

A lot of NFL teams at the time, felt Troy was too big a hitter for his frame. I don't have it anymore, but I can recall reading it in at least 1 draft guide. A lot of smallish, DB who make a lot of big, lights out hits, have injury troubles. The assumption is that they don't have enough muscle to protect their frame. The concern was one of the reasons he fell out of the 1st round, because his performance on the field was excellent, and he projected to be a high pick.

Despite the fact that he didn't miss much time, his USC history points out the injuries he played through. Does those count or not? If it is the wear and tear that you are concerned about, which is presumably one of the reasons you consider past injury history, I don't see how you can't. He also had a series of serious injuries in high school (bruised kidney, torn back muscle and sprained shoulder in 1998, so he only played 4 games), so those alone would probably disqualify him as not having an injury history too (or maybe not).

[Sec-E4]

For the style of play that Polamalu played....I'd say he had a solid career. He stepped up and played when that Defense was in its prime.

[Panamamike]

For the style of play that Polamalu played....I'd say he had a solid career. He stepped up and played when that Defense was in its prime.

If by HOF you mean "solid career".....yeah, I'd say so!

[Panamamike]

Troy Polamalu wouldn't be the best example on someone who was injury prone in College and came into the NFL and didn't get hurt to much

IF you expect a guy to play 12-13 years and not have any years with injury time missed, I would suggest a lifetime of great disappointment. The LTs, Walter Payton, Bruce Mathews are the exception, and definitely not the norm.

[KNSD]

I think everybody can agree that Verrett qualifies as a high risk/high reward guy. Slight frame, weird injury, came into camp hurt.

Keenan Allen the same way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keenan_Allen and he hasn't had any injury issues at all.

That's what high risk/high reward means. There is a high risk that these guys will be injured a good portion of their careers (risk), but if they are not then they have a chance to play at level greater than their draft position (reward). While there are some cases where the risk part wins (Varrett - so far), there are also cases where the reward wins (Allen - so far).

While you can say it's a crap shoot with individual players and that different college injuries mean different things on the risk scale, ON AVERAGE if you draft injury prone players, they're going to be injury prone in the NFL. We haven't seen anything yet that tells us the Chargers have some magic formula that makes them the exception to the statement above. (They are 31st in the league.)

[Panamamike]

I think everybody can agree that Verrett qualifies as a high risk/high reward guy. Slight frame, weird injury, came into camp hurt.

Keenan Allen the same way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keenan_Allen and he hasn't had any injury issues at all.

That's what high risk/high reward means. There is a high risk that these guys will be injured a good portion of their careers (risk), but if they are not then they have a chance to play at level greater than their draft position (reward). While there are some cases where the risk part wins (Varrett - so far), there are also cases where the reward wins (Allen - so far).

While you can say it's a crap shoot with individual players and that different college injuries mean different things on the risk scale, ON AVERAGE if you draft injury prone players, they're going to be injury prone in the NFL. We haven't seen anything yet that tells us the Chargers have some magic formula that makes them the exception to the statement above. (They are 31st in the league.)

The question is "what is injury prone"?. Very very few players going into the draft have a perfect health history. It is a violent sport and injuries happen all the time. If a guy misses 4 games in 4 years due to 2 different injuries, one of which is a season ending surgery, but is expected back 100%...is that injury prone? Or a guy that is constantly banged up and has nagging injuries to hammies, or ankle sprains but plays, albeit at much less than 100 %...is that Injury prone? Again if someone only drafts guys with completely clean bills of health, they are going to miss on a LOT of good players as most guys have a history of varied injuries between HS and college.