If only there was someone who could suggest a better way, for the welfare of our players, to avoid these injuries.  A new strength and conditioning regimen, maybe?  Trigger release something?

This year felt like a lot of injuries were hitting us but I didn't bother to quantify the loss.  It's actually worse than I thought.

Thanks for this. Can you do the analysis for past years?  It always seemed to me like M's injury rate was higher under Barwis than other teams', as it does now for Wellman. That might just be proximity bias because I obviously pay more attention to Michigan than to other teams, but this is starting to confirm that vague suspicion.

For further reading: "Prediction of Sports Injuries by Mathematical Models" (free full text):

"Sports injuries are most commonly caused by poor training methods; structural abnormalities; weakness in muscles, tendons, ligaments; and unsafe exercising environments. ... The most common cause of sports injuries is improper training whether from a technical or tactical point of view or simply training that is poorly planned and executed (Shaffer, 2006). The athlete exposes him or herself to possible sports injuries without adequate preparation for: exposure to potential danger, the playing position or type of activity, the duration of the competition or league, competition level, time dedicated to training and to rest. These variables can be quantified and turned into predictive factors (Ferrara, 2007)." 

That statement doesn't prove anything, of course. Just food for thought.

We were having a conversation about this subject, but it was censored; removed from the board and deleted. 

Did AIRBHG finally kick the bucket?

I appreciate the effort but ... let's be real.  Playing a game of football is roughly equivalent to driving a car into a brick wall at 30 miles an hour.  For the most part you are going to be OK but people get hurt.  

Bosch's missed games have nothing to do with S&C but account for 14% of Michigan's reported injuries here by games missed.  Steele's projections have nothing to do with reality.  We are penalized for starting a freshman OT.  

There is no accounting for the types of injury here either.  You don't get turf toe or a high ankle sprain from lifting weights.  The ability of S&C to ward off injury is not documented nor documentable without specifics.  What exactly does Michigan do differently than other schools?  Difference doesn't imply significance.  There is no accounting for good years that this team has had wrt injury with the same S&C.

What is the % signify in %GM?  There are 22 starts in every game (more if you count special teams.)  Michigan had 6.5% games missed by dividing starts lost by games played??    

If you break this down by individual injuries you will get a varied batch of particulars that can't be so nicely tossed in the coaching bucket.  Knowing what I do about Michigan makes me think the rest of the B1G is just as specious.

Concussion gate, stretch gate, Barwis vs. Wellman methods... it doesn't add up to a conspiracy.  Accountability starts and stops with the head coach.  

There's more to say here... it's just not worth it.  This analysis is wrong-headed.

Back of the envelope calculation: we seem to be looking at an average of rougly six or so significant injuries per team (I'm guessing that the injury length of the injuries driving the totals have been around five games per, now that we're nine games in). The s.d. would be roughly the square root of that, so one sigma is maybe 40% of the total, which would put Michigan and Purdue about two sigma above average.

Is that convincing? You'd expect somebody to end up at 55+ here even if everybody's injury risk was the same and there was no causal relationship behind any of this at all.

That Michigan and Purdue are in an unusual zone is interesting if you're trying to evaluate their season, but if you want to infer from this that the high injury rate is due to some cause, be it the staff, or S&C, or the head coach, you probably need more. We've got years of information on Wellman, on Hoke, for that matter most of this staff has been together for quite a while now other than Nussmeier. Is this season a one-off or is there a career-long pattern here? Same goes for any other hypothesis anyone wants to try.

...the timing of the injuries.

For example, when you take Braxton Miller out of the data, Ohio jumps down the list considerably.  The reason I bring this up is that my qualitative (i.e., non-data) opinion is that as teams lose, guys don't put up with injuries they way they do when they're winning.

I've coached long enough to know that when there is something to play for, guys do everything they can to get back on the field; when there is not much to play for, guys find reasons to avoid playing, especially practicing.

That said, I just quickly did the following excel exercise, so it looks like my theory sucks:

I calculated the correlation using excel, which is r = -0.4149.  The closer the absolute value of r to 1, the more correlated the data.  The fact that this is a negative value shows that, in general, the fewer the injuries, the greater the winning percentage.

Of course, even if there was high statistical correlation, there is a logical issue: does losing lead to increased sensitivity to injuries, or does the rash of injuries lead to more losing?  Or do they go hand-in-hand?

.

Could you possibly analyze the number of ACL injuries per team? While trauma and impact injuries are more random, the medical evidence does indicate a direct correlation between ACL injuries and the training methods utilized. When you remove the random nature of impact injuries, the "noise", we'll have a more clear picture of the costly mistakes being made in our football S&C program. 

Some training methods improve the resilience of connective tissue (tendons, ligaments, fascia, etc). Some training methods can produce hypertrophy, yet degrade agility, mobility, flexibility. Therefore, the incidence of ACL injuries would have a more direct correlation with regards to training methods, than occurrences such as broken bones or concussions.

Thanks. Peace.