The NY Jets are the most injured team in the NFL (again)

[GREAT WHITE HYPE]

It seems like every year the NY Jets are hit with an unprecedented string of injuries. Sure, every NFL team is forced to deal with injuries, but many Jets fans certainly believe that their team is hit harder than most.

And they would be right. The Jets have had an almost unparalleled string of injury luck over the last three seasons. Once again, they rank dead-last in the NFL when it comes to being healthy.

Using a statistic called "Banged Up Score" or B.U.S. — a statistic that calculates how injuries impact overall team and player performance — the Jets are the most injured team in the entire NFL.

This isn't some one-year diversion either. The Jets have dealt with a string of ridiculously bad injury luck dating back to the 2019 season. They just haven't been able to catch a break.

Why do the NY Jets continue to deal with so many injuries?

Using Football Outsiders' "Adjusted Games Lost" metric — the only one with a historical database to reference — the Jets ranked 29th in the NFL in 2020 and dead-last in 2019 in terms of injuries.

In fact, it wasn't even close in 2019. The Jets' adjusted games lost was a whopping 160.1. Only one other team even scored above a 103.0, that being the Washington Football Team who had a score of 131.0

For reference, the healthiest team in 2019 was the Minnesota Vikings with just 25.6 adjusted games lost. The Jets had over six times that.

Factoring in each of the last three seasons, the Jets have easily been the most injured team across the NFL with the San Francisco 49ers being the only other team in the same stratosphere.

Why is that? Could it be the training staff? The MetLife turf? The Jets curse? In reality, while people will want to point fingers and blame something or someone, it most likely just comes down to dumb luck.

The Jets have changed strength & conditioning coaches over that time with Robert Saleh bringing in Mike Nicolini from San Francisco this season. They reworked their training staff after that injury-riddled 2019 season.

Sometimes, there just isn't anyone to blame. Things just happen. In this case, bad, unfortunate things.

The Jets have seen the likes of Carl Lawson, Mekhi Becton, Corey Davis, Zach Wilson, Michael Carter, Elijah Moore, Marcus Maye, Jarrad Davis, Vinny Curry, Tyler Kroft, Bryce Huff, Lamarcus Joyner, Brandin Echols, Kyle Phillips, and Jamien Sherwood miss all or at least a significant portion of the season in 2021.

All 15 of those players were counted on as either starters or key contributors. And given how difficult it is for rebuilding franchises to acquire depth, it shouldn't be a surprise to see how much the Jets have struggled. The same goes for the Detroit Lions who rank 30th in health this season.

Maybe there's something in the water in Florham Park. Whatever the case may be, the Jets continue to be victims of the injury bug. Their bad luck is unrivaled by any other NFL team.

https://thejetpress-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/thejetpress.com/posts/the-ny-jets-are-the-most-injured-team-in-the-nfl-again-01fpx5fwphmz/

[TMAC]

Cursed

[undertow]

What?  I was told Douglas hiring new people was genius and he fixed this.

[fullblast]

Bad players who are barely NFL caliber are more likely to get hurt than good, NFL caliber players.

[BigRy56]

It may seem like an excuse to some but if healthy, this team is hovering near .500. This is an average team that got demolished by injuries, reverting the team back to a bottom of the league roster.

Hopefully we have better luck next year and have a better roster that can handle some injuries. We weren’t there after 1 offseason post-teardown 

[Beaver]

[slimjasi]

It’s just another thing that has killed the franchise over the last handful of years. It’s just exhausting 

 

[ChewyandtheJets]

Might also have to do with the mentality of being a perennial loser.   Players skip out more often or stay out longer than they would if the games were meaningful.  Why risk it?  Then other players see this and say if he ain’t playing than why should I?  It’s the culture I’d say it’s just as  likely that losing causes injuries than it is that injuries causes losing.  

[Hex]

53 minutes ago, fullblast said:

Bad players who are barely NFL caliber are more likely to get hurt than good, NFL caliber players.

Young players who have more college experience than NFL experience are more likely to get hurt than veteran players who are used to the speed of the game too

[Hex]

2 minutes ago, ChewyandtheJets said:

Might also have to do with the mentality of being a perennial loser.   Players skip out more often or stay out longer than they would if the games were meaningful.  Why risk it?  Then other players see this and say if he ain’t playing than why should I?  It’s the culture I’d say it’s just as  likely that losing causes injuries than it is that injuries causes losing.  

Well as long as we get better draft picks I'm all for losing every game each year!

I can't wait for this losing culture to end

[bostonmajet]

14 minutes ago, ChewyandtheJets said:

Might also have to do with the mentality of being a perennial loser.   Players skip out more often or stay out longer than they would if the games were meaningful.  Why risk it?  Then other players see this and say if he ain’t playing than why should I?  It’s the culture I’d say it’s just as  likely that losing causes injuries than it is that injuries causes losing.  

I think it could be more like, when you are loosing, on a loosing team, or a travelled player trying to make the team with bad talent, you might force things here or there to make the BIG play.

In the case of Becton, an inexperienced and bad player rolled on him and took him out. An inexperienced defender could be running around like crazy trying to make a play can bounce into one of his own players.

Or, it is the curse or just dumb bad luck.

[Jetscode1]

I blame Woody.  

[Anthony Jet]

Availability is a talent 

[munchmemory]

1 hour ago, undertow said:

What?  I was told Douglas hiring new people was genius and he fixed this.

Talk about a guy getting a pass.  Gotti was less Teflon.  This idiot's decisions have killed this team for another decade.  At least.

[Greg555]

Really is unbelievable 

I mean…covering the last 3 years…the Jets are the most injured team in football….  And there isn’t a close second!

 

if it’s mostly a matter of bad luck….can you imagine the odds for this to happen year after year?   

[Gibby]

Sounds like excuses. It’s far easier to except they’re the Jets. They suck and always will.

[Larz]

Maybe it’s practice?

there we’re rumblings about saleh pushing them too hard and they didn’t have much left on Sunday. 
 

A torn Achilles or popped kneecap is just bad luck but if you are worn down and don’t have your legs on game day I bet it factors in , you’re less likely to be able to protect yourself and more likely to pull a hammy 

[jeremy2020]

When you're losing and know you're gonna lose and the GM/Coach are saying it's ok to lose.. well, why force yourself on the field when you're not feeling absolutely 100%? Collect your check and call it a day. 

[jetstream23]

I appreciate this information but somebody should really peel back the layers of the onion on this stuff.  There are a variety of injuries that can take place and they can loosely be categorized into Somewhat Preventable and Unpreventable.

For example, an achilles tear is fairly hard to prevent from happening, it's somewhat random and unless you have different guys repeatedly getting those injuries they seem to be bad luck.  Same for most concussions.  Hits to the head are mostly a matter of wrong place, wrong time.  Unless they're happening to your defenders who are using poor tackling form they're almost unpreventable.

But if you have a team that is constantly suffering hamstring injuries in multiple position groups.  If you're getting other soft tissue injuries to muscles at a rate much higher than other teams, that could be a red flag that your strength, conditioning, stretching and recovery program isn't up to par.

Similar to what PFF and Football Outsiders do in analyzing the performance of each play by each player, DVOA, etc. I'd like to see something similar for injuries.  You could probably use some pretty basic and publicly available information like... Was the injury in a game or practice?  Contact or non-contact?  Injury body type (knee, ankle, head, etc.)? Position group of injured player?  Years in the league of the injured player? Has that player had the same injury before? etc.

Build a bank of data, maybe even assemble a really big repository over years and years, include college football, etc. and run some analytics on it to see what pops out.

[Matt39]

17 hours ago, Anthony Jet said:

Availability is a talent 

It's also a mindset. Players hanging out in the trainers room is a culture thing.

[Larz]

On 12/19/2021 at 9:21 PM, Larz said:

Maybe it’s practice?

there we’re rumblings about saleh pushing them too hard and they didn’t have much left on Sunday. 
 

A torn Achilles or popped kneecap is just bad luck but if you are worn down and don’t have your legs on game day I bet it factors in , you’re less likely to be able to protect yourself and more likely to pull a hammy 

I’m getting there lol. I’ll find it if I have to read a million tweets ?

[Irish Jet]

The Jets' season has been over by week 5 in each of the last three seasons.

Gee I wonder why players don't push themselves to play. 

[southparkcpa]

31 minutes ago, Irish Jet said:

The Jets' season has been over by week 5 in each of the last three seasons.

Gee I wonder why players don't push themselves to play. 

 

[ECURB]

42 minutes ago, southparkcpa said:

 

That man brought back to back AFC title games to NY…. but I know it’s cool for grumpy JETS fans to “blame woody”

[32EBoozer]

On 12/19/2021 at 10:41 PM, jetstream23 said:

Similar to what PFF and Football Outsiders do in analyzing the performance of each play by each player, DVOA, etc. I'd like to see something similar for injuries.  You could probably use some pretty basic and publicly available information like... Was the injury in a game or practice?  Contact or non-contact?  Injury body type (knee, ankle, head, etc.)? Position group of injured player?  Years in the league of the injured player? Has that player had the same injury before? etc.

Build a bank of data, maybe even assemble a really big repository over years and years, include college football, etc. and run some analytics on it to see what pops out.

Great idea! This also makes coaches and players more accountable. If a S & C coach has numerous players having soft tissue injuries, then I’d say these areas haven’t been addressed properly in training and stretching. Same for a player; if there is a data base available to teams, especially during contract negotiations, that player would be more inclined to put in the work maintaining his body.

Im sure team’s do this already but not to the level that you mentioned 

[More Cowbell]

On 12/19/2021 at 6:36 PM, Greg555 said:

Really is unbelievable 

I mean…covering the last 3 years…the Jets are the most injured team in football….  And there isn’t a close second!

 

if it’s mostly a matter of bad luck….can you imagine the odds for this to happen year after year?   

That has been my position. If it happens 1 year, it is just your turn, 2 years, bad luck. 3 years is a trend. This is more than the ball taking a bad bounce.

[LockeJET]

On 12/19/2021 at 6:36 PM, ChewyandtheJets said:

Might also have to do with the mentality of being a perennial loser.   Players skip out more often or stay out longer than they would if the games were meaningful.  Why risk it?  Then other players see this and say if he ain’t playing than why should I?  It’s the culture I’d say it’s just as  likely that losing causes injuries than it is that injuries causes losing.  

I was just going to post something like this. When you are a perennial loser and out of the playoffs before Thanksgiving, there’s no reason to rush guys back with injuries. In many cases if we were in the hunt the team might have brought some guys back towards the end. 

[The Crusher]

They don’t run enough stairs? 

[southparkcpa]

3 hours ago, ECURB said:

That man brought back to back AFC title games to NY…. but I know it’s cool for grumpy JETS fans to “blame woody”

You are defending a man who left his team for 4 years to his unaccomplished brother. Is WAY below 500 as an owner, has gone through what 7 HC's?, 4 GM's in 20 years?  He is a buffoon.  Shows NO sense of how to run a business.  His wiki page is almost empty, his brothers is less than a page.  The acceptance of failure by this fan base is what amazes me. You probably have a Pennington pin up on the wall and grew up in an era of 5th place trophies.  I don't apologize that I have demanded more of my self and my surroundings.  BTW.... Jets D gave up 24 unanswered points in BOTH AFC Champ games.  The Eagles, Chiefs, Pats,  and other teams have done this in the last 12 years. It's no big deal unless you are a Jets fan. Then 9-7 is your superbowl.

[TuscanyTile2]

On 12/19/2021 at 5:55 PM, Beaver said:

Is that Ronnie Ortiz-Magro?