Jets Injuries Ranking

From The Jets Way:

Three years ago Joe Douglas realised that the Jets had a major problem with injuries. He created the athletic care and performance department in an effort to reduce the # of games missed by Jets players.

Although a study by Athlete Game Lost concluded that the Jets weren’t anywhere close to being the worst hit team between 2009-2022. If you look at the chart below we are in the middle of the pack and based on our ‘bubble size’ we weren’t missing our best players either. Obvious these numbers don’t include 2023, which saw Aaron Rodgers go down, the single most important player on the roster.


But if we take into account the 2023 season, then things look bleak for the Jets. According to this study, the Jets were one of the hardest hit teams. The ranking goes from 1 meaning the fewest injuries experienced, to 32 the most injuries experienced. The Jets were ranked 31st on offensive, 11th on defence and 27th overall…after being ranked 19th in 20222.


So based on the first table being a collection of injury data for over a decade and the last table being a collection of injury data over the last two years, you can conclude that since the Jets founded the athletic care and performance department the injury issues have actually got worse.

Which is why there was a major shake up in that department last month. Brad DeWeese ( director of high performance) has left and his right-hand men Robert Sausaman, the assistant director of high performance, and Matt Sams, the director of sports science have also departed.

Yesterday my buddy Matt sent me an interesting thread which detailed how the NFL spent $4 million on research to prevent hamstring injuries, and what Packers receiver Christian Watson found was that “he had a 20% asymmetry in the hamstring muscle between his right and left legs. This means his left hamstring was 20% stronger than his right one. So, as his weaker right hamstring tried to keep up with the explosiveness of his stronger left one, the weaker one became more easily fatigued and, in turn, injured. However, after learning this, Watson said he began working on closing that 20% gap to the point where he currently only has an 8-10% difference in strength. And while perfect symmetry is nearly impossible, he says his goal is to shrink the gap to around 6%.”

Now I found that pretty interesting, as that study at the university of Wisconsin is going to hopefully improve players ability to stay on the field. We’ll never be privy to the Jets athletic departments findings or the advice they gave to coaches on load management, injury prevention and recovery. What we can say is that didn’t work. So working in conjunction with the NFL and other teams is going to produce better results than just working within the confines of your own team.

The NFL spend millions and millions every year on injury research. After all, they’re selling a product and that product is significantly more valuable when your best players on the pitch. As we saw with the scheduling announcement, they feel the Jets owe them one considering they sold the Jets in primetime and then got an Aaron Rodgers-less product, which wasn’t overly appealing.

Based on the numbers from last year:

• Players missed 700 fewer games during the 2023 regular season due to injury than they did one year ago.
  
  
• The decrease in the injury burden was driven largely by a decline in lower-extremity injuries, including lower-extremity strains, knee injuries and ACL tears.
  
  
• Clubs began the 2023 injury prevention process in the offseason by developing individualized, data-driven preseason acclimation strategies to help players reintegrate into football activities at the start of training camp and decrease the risk of injuries as players ramp up to in-season performance levels. These efforts helped drive a 29% decrease in missed time due to lower extremity strains during training camp, compared to 2021 and similar to 2022 when the injury reduction efforts around the preseason ramp-up period began.
  
  
• Players also experienced a 50% lower recurrence rate of lower extremity injuries this season
  

Now the elephant in the room here is the turf at Metlife, or turf in general.

“A 2018 study underscores the risks of playing football, and other sports, on turf. The study assessed more than 4,800 NFL foot and leg injuries during regular season games between 2012-2016. It found that, had every game been played on a grass surface, at least 300 fewer foot and leg injuries would have been expected.

Turf fields also appeared to significantly increase the likelihood of non-contact injuries. About 20% more non-contact injuries occurred per play on a turf surface than a grass surface.”

But according to the NFL’s own independent study from 2023, “There was no meaningful difference (0.001) in non-contact lower extremity injury rate between synthetic and natural turf.” - But this is just taking one years worth of data, and the NFL do contextualise that by stating this is the smallest gap in 7 years, meaning that right now this is the exception rather than the norm. A ton of studies that take data from decades worth of professional sports all agree that playing on natural grass is always beneficial. The injury rate is lower, the players prefer it, the league prefers their players to be on the field and the fans want it. The only people who don’t want it is NFL owners, who are more concerned with hosting concerts and raking in money than putting the interests of their players first.

Like most teams, the Jets season is reliant on the health of its players. A big injury to Aaron Rodgers or Tyron Smith, or any number of their stars could take a Championship campaign to an early exit. The Jets tried their own approach with the athletic care and performance department, but the results have been disappointing. With a shake-up of personnel, let’s hope 2024 is significantly better.

 

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