One of Phil Steele's recent blog posts focused on 'Starts Lost to Injury.' The three healthiest teams in college football last year were Western Michigan, Ohio State, and Louisiana Tech. Our Hokies came in at the number 4 slot.
http://www.philsteele.com/Blogs/2017/AUGUST17/DBAug05.html
From a VT perspective, we only lost 7 total starts to injury last season with a percentage of 2.3% starts lost.
It seems crazy that we were pretty healthy throughout the season last year, given that we've seemingly had injuries to major contributors in previous years. I'm prone to say it was just a fluky thing, but it sure helped Coach Fuente's first season to have your starters healthy for the majority of the year (especially considering the dropoff in experience at some of the skill positions).
Or hey, maybe Hilgart is really that good in preparing football players for the grind of a season. Whatever the reasons, hopefully we see more of the same in Year 2!
Comments
3 of the top 4 played in their conference championship game last year.
We didn't lose starts, but some of our guys look like they just walked off of a civil war battle field with how bandaged, taped, braced, and wrapped we were last year.
Impossible, I have it on good authority that our S&C staff has caused countless preventable injuries.
/s
Yeah I thought our guys get hurt 100x more than any other team
I wonder if this takes into account pre-season season-ending type injuries.
Let's just say, there were some serious tough guys who played through some things that they probably should have been sitting for. Both of our returning DEs are some tough hombres.
Agreed. I know the stats don't necessarily tell the complete story, as guys will play banged up. Mihota basically playing with one shoulder the last third of the season is still pretty remarkable.
But I do think it's telling that our return to 10 wins also coincided with avoiding season-ending injuries to all our major contributors.