Rubes

Any product that starts with B so they can use the BBB acronym with its double-entendre.

Yeah, I mentioned that a few posts above. The problem is that they chose the wrong comparator group—they compared the injured players with themselves pre-injury, and also injured players who returned to play vs. those who did not return to play. Both are incorrect comparisons. They should be comparing injured players to age-, NFL experience-, and position-matched players who did not suffer an ACL injury at that point in their careers.

Don't be so sure...most people in medicine are not trained to do research, and a good deal of research that is done is not done well. It's the job of the journal reviewers to spot problems with study design or analysis, and that process is fraught with issues—not the least of which is that reviewers aren't paid to do it, so you never know how carefully they do their job. Journals also gain from articles that draw attention, even if they are not done well, so there is a motivation in some cases to publish rather than reject. It's hard to tease apart. Still, these authors are from Drexel and Duke, two pretty strong research universities, so it's a little surprising. The problem here is that they didn't use the right comparator group. They were comparing individuals pre- and post-injury, and comparing those who were injured and returned to play vs. those who were injured and never returned to play. The right comparator, as I mentioned earlier, would be those who were injured vs. those who weren't injured, matched based on their age, years of NFL experience, position, and maybe other factors like round they were drafted, whether they were a starter or backup at the time of injury, and so on.

Yep, I’m thinking they should have done a matched cohort study where they matched each player who suffered an ACL injury with players of the same age, years in the NFL, and position at the time of injury. Perhaps also include whether they were a starter or backup. Then you’d at least get a better sense of the impact of the injury on career metrics like starts, total plays, and so on as compared with similar players who didn’t suffer that kind of injury.

I'll admit that I've started believing that ACL injuries have become less of a concern in recent years, with players seemingly coming back to near pre-injury performance maybe the year after returning to play. Is that necessarily the case? Maybe not so much. From the March 7th Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine: Return to Play and Performance After Anterior Cruciate Ligament Reconstruction in National Football League Players (full article may be behind a paywall, but you can at least read the abstract) Obviously this is a population-level study, and conclusions at the population level don't necessarily apply to a particular individual and his specific injury. Not all ACL injuries are the same, depending on the nature and extent of the ligament injury. It is also specific to positions: interestingly, WRs were similar to QBs in losing only about a quarter (18% and 17%, respectively) of their total snap count postinjury. So perhaps something to consider with regard to someone like Jameson Williams. But still, this is a pretty sobering study, though I haven't gone through it in great detail to critique the methods. It's important to bear in mind that their study group was only up to 2018, so any improvements in ACL repair since then are not taken into consideration. Also of interest, they note that "NFL players have significantly shorter careers postoperatively (2.1 years) compared with players in other professional leagues such as the National Basketball Association (NBA; 4.5 years), National Hockey League (NHL; 4.5 years), and Major League Baseball (MLB; 2.9 years)." Overall, ACL injuries are still bad news for NFL players who aren't QBs. Thought some of you might be interested to read that.

I see you there, trying to make this into another Edmunds thread, and I WON'T HAVE IT! 😉

Yeah, it was #53, which I believe is Dodson. That said, I don't blame Dodson since he didn't really trip Hyde per se—Dodson was fully extended blocking a Patriot in front of Hyde, and Hyde just couldn't avoid him enough to get around/over him.

My guess is that BB discussed it with him and Jerry decided to see if he could get a better deal elsewhere.

You must mean this one...such a great play!

How about practically any call that was made by Murphy?

Is the joke that he has fans?

Draft another G this year and have those four duke it out for the starting 2 jobs next year.

You won't like it. But here you go: An introduction to the wonderful world of Personal Seat Licenses. Briefly, it means you pay for the right to pay for a season ticket. But you do (usually) get the money back if you sell it PSL to someone else. If you drop your season tickets, you often forfeit the money.

Man, I thought Boettger's injury looked pretty bad...as in, probably not playing at least the first half of this season bad. But since this is a 1-year deal, I suppose that means it's not as bad as expected.

Best. Episode. Ever.

Well, at least we know the messed up kickoff in the KC playoff game wasn't somehow his fault...

This post had @4merper4mer written all over it. Well done!

Don't want to take anything away from @StHustle since the post was his, but it's for "just kidding".

Did you not see the j/k at the bottom of the post?

Damn, this is the guy who converted the 3rd and 18 in OT in the Houston playoff game. That was a killer—right before the final killer when Watson escaped that sure sack.

Seems like the Colts will try just about anybody these days.

Pretty amazing to see how far we've come in the past couple of decades with this injury. Previously, if you tore your achilles, no way you could come back and have the kind of power and force needed to be an impact, speed NFL player—ever, much less in 6 months.

So you think we should give up on Brown and replace him?

I mean, let's not go too overboard here...the left side of our line is very strong with Dawkins and Saffold, Morse is no All-Pro but he's a very good C, and I get that people aren't sold on Spencer yet, but he did show great promise as a rookie and should get even better with another year and Kromer. Really, the only real weakness is a single position, RG. They'll take care of it one way or another. How many teams are strong at all five positions?