This is not the easiest data to come by so there are some assumptions:
1) Backup QBs, Ps, Ks don't count for DNP unless the starter was also DNP
2) For the 2018 years, if a player only played 4 games and was RS'd then it was assumed to not be due to injury
3) Minor players that only played in blow outs do not count towards Players DNP or Games DNP
4) There was no easy way to determine if a player DNP due to injury. So there might be punishments in there. I did not count Trevon Hill or Sean Savoy in our numbers for 2018 as they were healthy and left the team.
5) The total players is the number of players that were able to accumulate a stat during the season. If a long snapper never made a tackle then it is possible to not have counted him.
6) I didn't count the Clemson players that tested positive for drugs last season
7) I chose Bama, and Clemson because they have depth. I chose NC State as a comp program to ours for recruiting/depth purposes that plays in our conference. VT was chosen on 3 year increments.
8) I will try to update when i get a chance, but i have things to do!
UPDATED DATA!!!!
1) I added the class of the DNP players.
2) it takes me ~12 minutes per school
3) There are a boat load of freshman DBs playing 9+ games in a season. It's kind of alarming.
4) 2015 WVU recruited Miami. It feels like half their team was from Miami.
5) 2018 VT played a lot of sophomores and it shows.
6) It appears that sophomores and freshman get injured more than juniors and seniors. This makes sense as they haven't been through as many offseason conditioning programs as the juniors and seniors. However, with the data I have they could just be a DNP coaches decision instead of an injury. I would assume that more seniors play than freshman so there is more chances to get injured as a junior and senior.
7) PSU has the craziest roster management. They played a bunch of true freshman in 5 games last year. Just 5 games. In 2015 they have a bunch of 1-2 games burning redshirts.
8) Between 2015 and 2016 VT there were a lot of the same names.
9) Iowa was picked at random as a team that recruits in the same 20-30 realm as VT. WVU and PSU are close to us competing for similar recruits. Northwestern was for those that want to compare VT to the more academic institutions.
| Record | Games DNP | Players DNP | Total Players | Games DNP per Players | Seniors | Juniors | Sophomores | Freshman | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 Alabama | 14-1 | 73 | 20 | 55 | 3.65 | 5 | 6 | 2 | 7 |
| 2015 Alabama | 14-1 | 76 | 20 | 61 | 3.80 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 5 |
| 2018 Clemson | 15-0 | 46 | 18 | 65 | 2.56 | 5 | 3 | 3 | 7 |
| 2015 Clemson | 14-1 | 74 | 22 | 58 | 3.36 | 5 | 2 | 5 | 10 |
| 2018 Iowa | 9-4 | 59 | 23 | 55 | 2.57 | 1 | 7 | 10 | 5 |
| 2015 Iowa | 12-2 | 45 | 14 | 50 | 3.21 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| 2012 Iowa | 4-8 | 48 | 20 | 52 | 2.40 | 1 | 5 | 7 | 7 |
| 2018 Maryland | 5-7 | 60 | 19 | 59 | 3.16 | 2 | 7 | 1 | 9 |
| 2018 NC St. | 9-4 | 92 | 27 | 64 | 3.41 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 9 |
| 2018 NW | 9-5 | 114 | 32 | 57 | 3.56 | 11 | 7 | 7 | 7 |
| 2018 PSU | 9-4 | 100 | 29 | 67 | 3.45 | 11 | 6 | 5 | 7 |
| 2015 PSU | 7-6 | 73 | 26 | 56 | 2.81 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 8 |
| 2015 WVU | 8-5 | 94 | 22 | 56 | 4.27 | 7 | 7 | 6 | 2 |
| 2018 VT | 6-7 | 77 | 28 | 57 | 2.75 | 1 | 5 | 15 | 7 |
| 2016 VT | 10-4 | 70 | 21 | 56 | 3.33 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 4 |
| 2015 VT | 7-6 | 96 | 24 | 59 | 4.00 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 5 |
| 2012 VT | 7-6 | 82 | 18 | 56 | 4.56 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 9 |
| Totals: | 75.2 | 22.5 | 57.8 | 3.34 | 4.8 | 5.3 | 5.9 | 6.5 |
Comments
This data is not easy to come by. That's some incredible sleuthing!
Appreciate looking this up, however I think we need a significantly larger sample size to prove that # of injuries/season is anything other than random.
I agree. Way to small of a sample.
100% agree, when I get more time I want to get more data, it took me about 2 hours to get all this but I can do it faster now that I know what I am doing.
Not that small. My guess is even if you expand by a factor of 10 or 100, it won't be much different.
The whole injury thing is just fans trying to create order out of disorder. VT has not just a young team, but a very young team (fewest seniors, 3rd most frosh) - and plays pretty much like one should expect a very young team to play right now (missed assignments, turnovers, etc., i.e. not very good).
You can argue about how and why and whether this should have happened, but it's violent game played by big, fast people with bad intent in which injuries aren't perfectly linear.
There isn't some underlying S&C problem causing some abnormal number of injuries.
But there is a problem with our DL consistently getting blown off the ball, but we can have that discussion another day...
Actually I would argue neither the OL or DL is getting beat at the LOS so much as someone(s) is totally blowing an assignment way too often. I hate to pick on a particular player, but go back and watch the Center position for the 1st half of the ODU game. There's a reason he wasn't there the 2nd half.
Even many of the missed tackles are IMO a result of being completely out of position (or not having primary responsibility for a gap) and thus off balance as much as bad technique.
My hope is this very young team shows significant progress in the mental parts of the game as the season progresses. My fear is won't happen soon enough and they'll be shell shocked by Nov.
You need a sample size of at least 30 to prove statistical significance.
What? The number of samples to "prove" a statistical significance depends on the data, the amount of variance, the statistical significance cutoff, and the statistical test performed. It could be a sample size of 3, 30, 300, 3000, 30,000, or never.
I addressed this in a comment below, but if you are unsure if your population is truly normal, a sample size of 30 is when the central limit theorem starts to hold true. Obviously, it would be ideal to survey the entire population, but if you don't know the true distribution of the data, and you don't have the means to survey the entire population, a sample size of 30 is largely agreed upon to be the smallest sample size for which you can assume normality.
Small sample, but it says we are not as far from norm as the chicken little types would have you believe.
This was labor intensive. If I throw out 2018 it's easier to write a program because i dont have to determine redshirt status which is a simple thing to do the way i did it, but harder to program. In addition, determine a starter for QB would be tough. Take Jj last year. he looks like he redshirt or was a back up so the logic to programatically weed that out is tough.
Yeah Science Bitches!
I need to do more Clemson and iowa cause they look like outliers
While this is an admirable effort, there are so many confounding variables in an analysis like this that it is hard to draw any trace of conclusion.
To determine where injuries come from, you have to define what your reference frame is. Are we talking a program as internal or a player as internal?
If we are trying to determine VT's injury rate and if it is higher or lower, is it due to conditioning & strengthening, scheme, opponent scheme (looking at your chinballs), weather type, position, etc. etc.
The most luck that we have had with injury analysis in a wide spread sense in determining the riskiest types of plays (kickoffs). This data is more static at the moment than signal.
I find it interesting how when the mob comes out with the pitchforks saying "our S&C staff is flawed, look at all the injuries!" or "Fuente cant develop QBs!" any sort of measured response is laughed off as someone with their head in the sand. However, when data is collected and numbers are put to it the immediate response is yeah but you need 30 reference points for statistical significance or this data is static. Somehow the hot take has more validity than data, even if it is incomplete. Its almost like the TKP crowd wants to find the one thing that isseriously broken so that there could be any easy fix rather than realizing its gonna be a process to be relevant again. I guess this shouldnt be surprising, humanity has a long history with scape goating.
Haven't been on the internet much?
We're going backwards though.
The laws of physics are a bitch... when a program has a downward trajectory it takes time and energy to reverse course. This means that "its gonna get worse before it gets better". That is always the case, in this case it is exagerated. Everyone acknowledged that the VT rebuild would start in Fuente year 2.
As the the one who requested for 30 data points, I feel obligated to mention that in no way, shape, or form do I believe that our S&C program is flawed, in fact, I believe quite the opposite. Additionally, above I implied that injuries were random, and that we'd need far more evidence to prove otherwise:
FWIW, I asked for 30 data points because, unless we know the population is normal (we don't), a sample size of 30 is smallest sample size for which central limit theorem starts to hold true.
EDIT: I wanted to address this too:
The line between 'finding one thing to fix' and 'realizing it's going to be a process' is very, very blurry. I'm okay with it being a process, but fans need some evidence that (a) there is a process planned, and (b) the process can be executed. You can believe that Fuente is a good coach, and the best option for VT at the moment, but still be critical of his overall strategy. Two reasonable questions include:
I don't think either of these are 'quick fixes,' but I'd have a lot more confidence in this staff if they better communicated their needs and challenges. Failing to do so gives our fans the impression that they have no plan to correct these issues.
3 more hours of free time and I'll have it! Might take a week or two.
No rush! I do appreciate the efforts here, I know how difficult it is to pull this data from different places!
You used the word theorem so I immediately believe you
Yea, I dont mean to call out individuals (i do realize I used individual quotes) because I realize that individuals dont necessarily fit into the pitch fork group or the data group or the head in the sand group.
My comment was more general and observational, not meant to be accusatory of any individual.
Edit: I do think there is a lot to be worried about. In general player development has seemed to be lacking, whether that be the qb making reads or cbs tackling or ol executing assignments or safeties and lbs out of position. Development is probably my biggest gripe. The other complaint I find reasonable is the restricting access to the team, it would be nice to have more transparency and fan engagement. On recruiting, I maintain that the last class, ratings wise, was our best ever. This year is looking rough but it isnt over yet, and I dont think it is fair to judge the class signing in feb 2020 in sep 2019. In my eyes, recruiting on the whole has improved. Once this class is complete that can be reevaluated.
Leg. I think we're on the same page. As a fan right now, it's tough to articulate that you're critical of the staff, but don't want to rush into sweeping changes out of frustration.
There's a lot of football left to play this season, and a big opportunity at the end of the season to address the staff's weaker points (recruiting). Let's go 1-0 this week, and evaluate at the end of the season.
Ok, I am all in on hiring Iowa's S&C and Doctors and Trainers.