Bears’ turnaround aided by much better luck with injuries by Michael David Smith
What was the biggest factor in the Bears’ turnaround in 2018? Trading for All-Pro pass rusher Khalil Mack? Hiring Coach of the Year Matt Nagy? The development of their young starting quarterback, Mitchell Trubisky?
Or was it just the dumb luck of not suffering many significant injuries?
FootballOutsiders.com uses an advanced metric called “adjusted games lost” to show which teams were hurt the most by injuries. The metric incorporates not only how many games were missed by players on any team, but also whether those games were missed by starters or backups, and also which teams had a lot of players who were at less than 100 percent because they missed practice during the week with injuries. It’s probably the single best metric to answer the question, “How healthy was this team?”
And the answer is, the Bears were very healthy in 2018. After being very unhealthy in 2017.
Chicago ranked as the third-healthiest team in the NFL in 2018, after ranking 31st in 2017. No team in the NFL improved more on the injury front than the Bears last season.
Unfortunately for the Bears, staying healthy is mostly a matter of getting lucky, and teams that have a sudden improvement in their health often regress toward the mean the following season. The Bears may have to count on their roster depth more this season than they did last season.
Post by paytonisgod on May 15, 2019 14:25:15 GMT -6
I was also bringing this up a lot the last couple years. I know people didn't like Fox but there's only so much you can do when injuries pile up at that rate. Especially with a team in rebuild mode. I hope it was the change of conditioning and strength coach that helped the turn around and not just a lucky year last year.
Like I said they are very suggestive. Superficially it really looks like the Trestman and Fox years had really a lot of injuries. Is it related to the coaching staffs? I would like to think so but this is a really small sample size and it could easily be pure coincidence. But if the next two years under Nagy have relatively low AGL stats, it could be related to coaching.
I talked about the injuries for I don't know how long. Glad we made improvement, but some things are unavoidable.
Yes, that’s true. It’s also true that some are avoidable. Or at least possibly avoidable.
Pre-Nagy we had a freakish amount of pulls/strains and it seems that those were not entirely by chance. I’m glad the team tried a new S&C staff cuz the last one was either not getting the job done or was really, really unlucky.
I think the fact that Nagy didn't play any key players during the preseason helped the Bears a lot on the injury front.
Funny you mentioned that cuz for some reason I was thinking about this the other day.
This August there’s zero reason Khalil Mack needs to play a single down in the preseason. Could probably say the same thing for Hicks, Travathan, Cohen, and Robinson too.
I talked about the injuries for I don't know how long. Glad we made improvement, but some things are unavoidable.
Yes, that’s true. It’s also true that some are avoidable. Or at least possibly avoidable.
Pre-Nagy we had a freakish amount of pulls/strains and it seems that those were not entirely by chance. I’m glad the team tried a new S&C staff cuz the last one was either not getting the job done or was really, really unlucky.
Yeah, it's a mix of things. The S&C coach generally has no input on how the head coach runs a practice, and head coaches need to be mindful of the load their putting on these guys as much as the S&C guy does. Fox was an old school guy who probably ran an old school practice.
I think the fact that Nagy didn't play any key players during the preseason helped the Bears a lot on the injury front.
Funny you mentioned that cuz for some reason I was thinking about this the other day.
This August there’s zero reason Khalil Mack needs to play a single down in the preseason. Could probably say the same thing for Hicks, Travathan, Cohen, and Robinson too.
Kyle Long too. I get it that the starting unit needs reps as a unit, but man, I do not like exposing him to a pre-season injury. Great player. But hasn't completed a season in years now. Why chance losing him before the regular season even starts?