Derek Schultz of XL 950 hooks us up today with his excellent interview with Aaron Schatz. You can download the interview by clicking the link, or just listen in the embedded player provided on the lower right side of the page. They discussed a wide variety of issues including the effect of the coaching changes on the Colts, what might happen to Manning after age 35, and the Colts injuries.
Schatz mentioned that he didn’t think the Colts were decimated by injuries in 2008. There’s an odd reality about the Colts injuries the last two years. According to FO, the Colts were the second most injured team in 2007, losing 64 “real” games (70.3 AGL) to injury. In 2008, they lost 70.2 “adjusted games” to injury (almost the same number of AGL as in 2007), but only ranked 9th in the NFL. The chart shows that they were just as hurt in 2008 as 2007, but there were other teams that got hit even more dramatically by injury in 2008.
The Colts also suffered two non-injury losses (Pitcock and Johnson) that cost them another 31 games that don’t count in the standings..
To some degree, I question the accuracy of the 2008 numbers FO generated. Off the top of my head, I count the Colts lost 64 ACTUAL GAMES from the starters (identical to 2007). According to AGL the Colts lost a total of 70.2 games. That should take into account games in which players showed up on the injury report, played, but weren’t at full strength. I question how it’s possible that the Colts only eeked out 6.2 extra games on that basis (both years). In fact, I don’t claim my list to be exhaustive, it’s just what I could come up with off the top of my head. There might have been more starters that missed games that I overlooked.
Here’s the list of the starters who missed starts and how many games they did not play in according to footballreference.com:
Haggler 7
Sanders 10
Jackson 9
Hayden 6
Brackett 4
Saturday 4
Addai 4
Pollack 3
Ugoh 1
Lilja 16
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