I believe they need to attempt some change that might have a positive effect on their overall health — whether it be adopting new training philosophies, altering how they evaluate prospects or changing personnel philosophies.– Paul Kuharsky, ESPN
The Colts have been unlucky (contact based injuries) and responsible (non-contact injuries) for the health of their team. They statistically are the most injured team in the NFL and the questions are why? The Functional Movement Screen can’t be blamed for not predicting injuries but again it can’t be used as evidence of it being effective either. If they hold out their players longer because they care about re-injury rates or the long term wellbeing of their athletes that’s a factor that must be looked at. I don’t know their performance and medical staff at all, but they are now under the spot light by the media. Are they at fault? Are they plagued with bad luck?
I blogged about medicalball and moneybell being the future as I believe in 5-10 years the sports page will adjust to add injuries by adding tables of basic stats. I also think owners and GMs will see Dashboards of player performance and basic metrics such as weight, body fat, workout attendance, effort in the weight room, speed, power, and of course conditioning. Instead of targets and completion percentage with Football Outsiders, we will se hybrid adjustments based on fatigue such as 4th quarter offense vs defense or video tracking that is getting speed of routes and trench warfare statistics of the line of scrimmage dynamics. Currently one professional sports team still doesn’t know if a pitcher gained fat or even weight during the season, making me think we may never see every organization up to par with gross accountability with preparing for the game.
The biggest problem we see is that statistics is seen as some sort of snake oil with some outside believers. Statistics is not perfect or magic, but denying basic math and potability is a sin and borderline unprofessional. If a team is chronically and significantly more hurt than others it’s not a fluke after 6 years, it’s a cardinal sign of problems. The first step like Paul wrote in the ESPN article is to accept that something needs to change. I believe that the records of the last 5 years with the colts will show that the problem is clear or they are not capturing the right data. Perhaps the screening system is working but they are not able to fix the problems? Who knows. What is true is that the injury rates to the Colts is something that is not talked about by FMS proponents. I feel that the FMS has some merit as I use 2 of the 7 screens every year because they give me information I need, but the system as a whole is flawed and is clearly not making a positive impact with the Colts Organization.
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