Jac":2unbulgr said:
Has anybody addressed why the Okung toe injury happened in the first place? Was it just a freak occurrence? I guess I'd feel better about an injury where there's an obvious cause that can be rectified. Like his first high anke sprain when somebody landed on him (i.e., hopefully nobody gets awkwardly pushed onto him again). I was actually more worried about his second high angle sprain in that San Diego preseason game when he just appeared to be pushing off. Muscle injuries you can help prevent going forward with conditioning, stretching, etc.
John Clayton actually talked about that some on either yesterday's (or the day before's) Wyman, Mike, and Moore Show. He was asked about injuries throughout the NFL -- specifically the seemingly large amount of ACL Tears in the NFL this year. Throughout the NFL, that figure is way up. Kevin Siefert over ESPN put out an interesting piece on that. Here is a snippet ...
At the time I was still seeking out documentation, but I have it now and it's as staggering as you might imagine. The bottom line: 30 players have already been placed on injured reserve this season because of confirmed torn ACLs, a pace that has already exceeded the total for all of 2011 and has nearly done the same for 2012.
That's right. In all of 2011, according to StatsPass.com via ESPN Stats & Information, confirmed ACL injuries sent 25 players to injured reserve. The figure was 32 in 2012. Those numbers do not include players who suffered a torn ACL but were waived/injured rather than placed on injured reserve.
Source:
http://espn.go.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/95723/inside-slant-big-spike-in-acl-injuries
So, in 2011 (throughout the NFL) there were 25 players that were lost for the season due to ACL injuries.
In 2012, that number jumped to 32 ... and in 2013 (through 10/23 when this piece was written), there were already 30. With Rice going now, make that 31 players lost for the season [and off the top of my head, I'm not sure if there were any others to go down with an ACL tear in Week 8]. Regardless, that's a staggering number. And we're only through Week 8 people!
His theory on why we are seeing this is that this is a direct result of the Collective Bargaining Agreement limiting the amount of conditioning/workouts that teams used to have. In essence, what you might be seeing is that less workouts means those ligaments and tendons simply aren't getting stretched out the way they used to. Result -- increased tears and injuries. Sounds plausible, but who knows. One thing's for sure, the increase in injuries throughout the NFL is certainly alarming.
