The New York Giants (7-9) had their first losing season since 2004, but setting a new standard with 144.6 AGL can help explain that. The previous high belonged to the 2009 Bills (6-10) at 122.8 AGL. We'll break down the injuries by units next, but the Giants were banged up on both sides of the ball.
The Giants almost pulled off the deflating feat of leading the league in AGL on both offense and defense, but the Saints just edged them out with the worst defensive AGL (74.4) in our database. The Giants rank third behind the 2012 Packers (62.8). However, the Giants, Buccaneers and Colts did all beat out the 2011 Rams (66.6) for the worst offensive AGL in our database. New York's 56.0 increase in offensive AGL is the largest for one season. |
We've been injury prone for 20 years, and it cant be just the player responsibility/circumstance.
When you get down the Giants level of injury it's also obvious that injury is affecting the bench, too. But you've got a couple years in a row now where Green Bay has had a bunch of injuries and still made the playoffs. They're doing something right.
There is no metric that can really detail the impact of injuries on a team, especially one that doesn't adjust for the relevance of each starter hurt. Aaron Rodgers misses 7 games, David wilson misses 11-12 games, and in their equations the Giants are more adversely effected by that. Because they're "both starters" and Wilson missed more time
Kind of hard to complain about depth issues when it's your 3rd string (and in the case of later in the year street FAs) Center AND Guards that are being thrust into the starting lineup. NO team has that amount of depth.
Another metric? The horrible injury luck the Giants have had with most of their top 3 round players in the Coughlin era. We've lost entire drafts of players to injury. Sure, a guy like Sintim was a bust, but was it because he really couldn't play, or the rampant injuries robbed him of his athletic gifts? Well, our drafts were full of Sintims. On top of that, we have guys like Snee and Diehl who still should be in their prime at the end of their careers due to injuries.
I say blame the new CBA.. longer offseason.. less hitting in practice.. less practices in pads.. no more two a days.. guys arent in the condition they need to be in for football as early..
We've been injury prone for 20 years, and it cant be just the player responsibility/circumstance.
We have been prone. Replacing them isn't exactly rational, but maybe they are jinxed. :)
If you lose a starter who isn't that good to begin with or has a capable backup behind him, it's going to impact you far less than if you lose an absolute key guy. You could easily argue that losing just one specific starter if he's a key cog hurts a team more than losing 2-3 starters in other spots.
People are too quick to look at the raw numbers and say "see! The Giants always have the worst injury luck!"
Bad injury luck is when Tom Brady's ACL tears in Week 1.
Yeah. It's been pretty insane. Especially recently.
Next set of blunders involved the whole OL - its inuries & age. But who knew Baas and Snee would be completely done so early in the year?
Lastly, if we had a "normal" year of injuries we'd have made the playoffs last year though we were not that talented overall. The things that hurt us in addition to the injuries include the down years guys like Webster, JPP and Nicks had. That hurt too.
I'd be hard pressed to believe that there's any team that anyone here follows to the same degree that they follow NYG.
For the most part, it's a perception bias. But again.. it's more about who you lose. Not how many you lose. When a dude like Da'Rel Scott winds up IR'd, you're not exactly losing much.. but it still counts as a player lost. Which is why I don't really like these lists.
We did have a bunch of injuries... not many of them were impact players. Eli played the majority of the year and just sucked. Same for Nicks. Cruz played most of the year. Beason never missed time when he got here, Hill never got hurt, Rolle never got hurt, Prince never got hurt, LinJo played 15 games, Tuck didn't miss a game, Randle didn't miss a game.. how many real impact players were lost long-term this year aside from JPP? Baas? Eh. I'd count Wilson but I'm one of the only people on this board who doesn't think he's a bust.
Injuries at the same position are where you get hurt the most. We lost Snee and Baas back-to-back and didn't have much behind them.
Losing Baas did hurt. But I think the injuries really just exposed how poorly our OL was assembled going into this year. There was virtually no protection whatsoever against injury and we were relying on too many vets with injury histories to stay healthy. Reese did a poor job in that regard.