On Players' Health: Luck vs. Skill
 

I actually like Cushing as a player, but I don't think he's durable enough to spend a first round pick on. I could easily see him winning defensive rookie of the year for the right team. At the same time, I could easily see him out of the league before the end of his rookie contract with injury issues. Health isn't just luck, it's a skill.

I have to part company with you on that last sentence. You're saying Weary's broken leg was a lack of skill? And Dunta's knee? And Tom Brady's missed year? The fact is, every player on our team is just one play away from having his career ended by a freak injury. Football is a brutal game. The players who go throughout their careers without serious injury are the lucky ones.

Sorry, I really should clarified what I was saying there. I almost did when I looked at it before posting, but I was in a hurry.

I was trying to paraphrase Will Carroll who specializes in reporting injuries (he's popped up on a few sites the last few years with regular columns, notably SI & Football Outsiders.) Namely the concept is that some athletes are more prone to injury than others and that those who can't stay healthy are pruned out at each level of play. If a player has a chronic problem staying healthy, its not just bad luck. When I was trying to search for a quote to better explain what I was trying to say, I came across this from FO's Quick Reads column which was likely written by Carroll (many of the excerpts in these columns come from emails the FO writers exchange back and forth):

Now, I hope they're wrong about Schaub, but this is an observation that's been made by those here as well. Going back to the original player I was talking about, Cushing didn't miss too many games in his college career, but just looking through his profile on Draft Countdown I see a shoulder injury that knocked him out for most of his freshman year; a strained hamstring/knee cascade that needed surgery in spring of 07, followed by an ankle injury later in the year; then a broken hand, which of course he played through with a cast. That's a pretty large and disparate group of injuries for such a short period of time, especially considering the shorter college seasons and smaller players. I wouldn't completely avoid drafting him, but I'd be wary.

I agree that not all players are equally likely to be injured. But I wouldn't call it a skill, I would prefer to call it situational.

Concerning Schaub, I think his problem is not that he is brittle, rather it is that he is an immobile QB with mediocre-to-bad pass protection. It's not just the number of times he gets sacked, it's that he is a stationary target and defensive players really tee off on him. Some of the hits are brutal. Add to that the fact that he tends to throw to a fair number of routes that require some time to develop. So I definately believe that he is more likely to be injured than most other QBs. And I think it is very important that we improve our pass protection or we may lose him for long periods of time.

Using RB as another example, older backs like Ahman Green are to the point where they have had their bodies ground down by a huge number of hits. Also, healing is a bit slower as they age. So you have a recipe for a back that is going to miss a lot of time. But I don't think of it as a skill that Ahman no longer has. It's just his situation.

While there is no single variable which can explain all, I don't think there is any doubt that a player's ability to avoid injuries is rather significant. Call it skill, toughness, what have you. For instance, Peyton Manning has been sacked 205 times in his career but he's never missed a start. By comparison, Schaub has missed 10 games in 2 years on 39 sacks. I don't think circumstances alone explain how Manning can weather 166 more sacks than Schaub but never miss a game compared to Schaub's 10. Simply put, there is something about Manning that makes him better at it. There are multiple reasons to point to - his ability to avoid the rush, his ability to get rid of the ball fast, him having a bigger frame for taking the abuse, maybe greater flexibility in his joints, arguably higher pain tolerance. I don't consider any of these circumstantial but are all skills he possesses that keep him on the field while others will be in the training room. As you said Bigtinylittle, one of the reasons for Schaub's injuries is how immobile he is. This is a skill (or rather a lack thereof).

Split these posts from the thread about the cutting of Green and Greenwood ...carry on.

Didn't mean to derail a thread. Responded more out of offseason boredom than anything.

Not a problem at all... just trying to be a good mod in keeping convo's separated.

Comparing Peyton to Schaub, the main difference I notice is that although Peyton isn't a fast guy, he adjusts in the pocket much better than Schaub does. I think he does this primarily to buy himself more time, but it also cuts down on those vicious hits that Schaub takes so often.

Early in the game that Schaub was injured, the OL was getting beat so badly that I figured it was only a matter of time before he would be gone. I felt there was no way Schaub was going to make it through that whole game. Unfortunately, I was right.

Discussing Cushing, Drew Boylhart believes that if Cushing played MLB that he'd be less likely to get injured.

He states, '{Cushing} will take the angle more when tackling a player and this will allow for a hard hit, but not such a jarring hit that hurts him. It might take Brian a little time to get comfortable at that position, but I also feel that he will eventually show his leadership skills better from that position. The key is to keep Brian healthy and on the field and if you keep him at OLB he will just meet the sweep or the off tackle, run head on and continue to get hurt. At MLB, he will be moving forward with an angle towards the player and tackle with movement."

I'm not sure if I buy into it, but there may be something to how he makes impact.

I am not sure what we can draw from this, but I thought Schaub was a completely different qb when he came back at the end of the year than I have ever seen him be before. He was taking hits and jumping back up and acting like nothing out of the ordinary had happened after his comeback. This is very different than any other time in his career with the texans. Before that when he would get hit hard (and sometimes not so hard) he would take a while to get up, or visibly grimice and show he was still feeling the hit. He took some big time shots at the end of the year and they didn't seem to even phase him. I am not sure if it was just me seeing things, or if something just changed with him after his injury at minn, but the guy hurt his knee, had it scoped (and frankly I wrote him off for the season at that point) and then came back within 4 weeks and played tougher than I have ever seen him play. Hopefully that will carry over to next season. Anyone else notice that, or was I just seeing things?

I think at the time Schaub went out, our pass protection was at it's worst. So maybe he was suffering the effects of multiple hits. Maybe when he came back he had healed somewhat. And by that time, the line was playing better so he wasn't taking so many vicious hits.

I still want us to do something to upgrade our pass protection, but I'm not exactly sure what we should do. Our defense is so poor it's kind of hard to justify a first day pick for the offense.

I actually noticed it to. I though there were a few hits after he came back that were going to put him out again, and he jumped up like he never had in the past and kept going.

I was wondering if maybe it wasnt a body hardening thing. The Marine Corps implemented a new for of hand to hand combat traninig just before I got out that was a mix of many martial arts styles. Part of the exercises were called "body hardening" we would strike each other in sensitive nerve areas over and over and over and over. After the first few sessions the pain became less and we were able to strik harder.

Now take Schaub. As a backup QB the ammount of physical abuse he was taking is minimal. After a few years riding the pine could his tolerance for the pain have lessened? Football players play through pain all the time because they are used to it. Take a person with the same physical size and general health of a NFL player that has never taken those hits and throw him into a even a practice scrimage and the likelyhood of them not feeling every little thing is pretty small. Hits, bruises, tweaks and such that a regular player shrugs off wouldnt be as easy for that person.

You make an excellent point here. I've spent quite a few hours researching running back carry totals and their effects on backs over the last few years and there definitely seems to be a degrading effect. And, while I could say that its just diminishing the player's skill, I think think that's a bit disingenuous. I still believe my initial point has validity, but I think I'm going to reflect a bit on where wear-and-tear fits in things.

That's a bit of an odd analysis from Boylhart - kinda goes against conventional wisdom. Based on purely anecdotal evidence, I've always believed that MLBs, especially slightly undersized ones or weakside backers that have been moved to the middle, have a tendency to have a hard time staying healthy. Dan Morgan's one that comes to mind (especially with the insane news today that he's unretiring), but then again Morgan's pretty much a poster boy for the "health is a skill" argument - is there any part of his body that he didn't sustain a substantial injury to during his career?

Because it involves connotations, I'm just a bit uncomfortable with using the term "skill" for this. I think it would be be better to call it something like injury probability. :)