NYG Dead Last Again in Injuries in 2015

Shocked! Not.

The NY Giants finished in last place in injuries in 2015, according to our benchmark Football Outsiders.  And it wasn’t even close.  They racked up 139 Adjusted Games Lost (AGL), surpassing the 31st team in the NFL (the Redskins) by 20 games lost.  Considering that JPP was included in this study, EVEN IF YOU DROP JPP FROM THE ANALYSIS, the Giants still finish in DEAD LAST.  That’s how bad the Giants were.

Again.

So now it is 3 years running that the Giants finished dead last.  And it is 7 consecutive years in the bottom half of the NFL.  Do you know what the odds are of finishing dead last for your franchise?  31 to1.  Two years in a row? ~1000 to 1. Three years in a row? 30,000 to 1.  The chances for any NFL franchise somehow doing this are still 1000 to 1.  And that is the Giants.  So anyone who tells you this is luck is ignorant in math, statistics and plain common sense.  Speaking about statistics, we did an Outlier (Tau) test and the Giants were an outlier.  Shocked. Not.  In the last 7 years, the Giants are 3 standard deviations away from the average.  NOT just the past 3 years.  The past 7 years.  So once again, there is obviously something very wrong with what is going on in East Rutherford.  We know it is not Met Life Stadium, as the Jets are one of the best in the NFL with a low AGL.  It is the Strength & Conditioning staff/Medical.  Their practices were not up to date.  The arrival of a new S&C Coordinator, Aaron Wellman, gives us hope that ANY change will be good enough to rid the old practices and get going witha new 21st Century approach.

This NY Giants blog has been discussing and investigating the S&C practices of the Gmen for many years.  For a glossary of links on the subject, go to the NY Giants Injury Catalog for more complete coverage.

UltimateNYG has identified the 21st Century need for more intensive flexibility (range of motion) training.  We interviewed fitness professionals and Professors of Sports Medicine.  We researched what others with success in the NFL were doing, including Luke Richesson of the Denver Broncos. It kept coming up… FLEXIBILITY.  More importantly, flexibility OVER strength.  Now do yourself a favor and read this link from 2 years ago in the NY Times about the Stanford University football team.

Turley is a strength coach, and he is not a strength coach, or not exactly. Strength is not his focus. Function is. Balance is. Flexibility is….. For the subtle art of injury prevention, the Cardinals stretch and stretch and stretch. They stretch before and after lifts and before and after practice. They stretch for fun.

Read what Richard Sherman says about the Cardinals and injury prevention.  I am waiting for any NY Giants beat writer to interview Richard Sherman about injuries.  I am waiting for any NY Giants beat writer to ask Walter Thurmond, one of 5 Giants to have a torn pectoral muscle in the past 2 seasons, what the difference has been with the Eagles (where they have been a Top 5 program the past 3 years, on average) versus the Giants.  Lastly, we challenge them to ask Aaron Wellman what his plans are for reversing this 7 years of horrible performance, and whether Wellman is familiar with the flexibility work being done by Shannon Turley and Luke Richesson.