[msqueri]

What a shock (not) that Stanford's star Freshman recruit is injured.

Do the Niners and Stanford drink the same water? Share the same S&C techniques? Something else?

Does Stanford have more injuries than the average College team? Or does it just seem worse cause they have no depth.

It seems bad because it's very unhelpfully concentrated in a very important position group (offensive line) and because fans always think their team has rotten luck, but Stanford may indeed be unluckier than most.

In terms of the number of absences overall, our top contributors (top 15 in snaps on either offense or defense) have missed 14 games, with 13 of those being on the offensive line. In essence, we have been incredibly decimated at offensive line and incredibly healthy otherwise. Overall, 2.33 key contributors out per game is almost exactly what my detailed off-season analysis of injury prevalence in the Pac-12 from 2014-2021 found was average for a Pac-12 team (2.37 average, 2.31 median). Given the grind of football I think it's more likely that the number would go up over the course of the season than go down, so for us to be right at the average midway through the season suggests that we are probably in line to be "unlucky" for the third straight consecutive season.

The overall point on injuries is something we can assess with more perspective in the off-season, but the OL absences are undoubtedly quite a string of bad luck.

P.S. Stanford's walking wounded OL rooms in 2019 and 2022 are unusual. OL is not a position that is historically extremely injury-prone. You'd expect intense attrition at positions like RB, WR, and DB, not OL.

P.P.S. Anecdotally, it seems like a pretty high number (majority?) of Stanford's OL issues are concussions. What may be happening is Stanford opting in to high OL attrition by being more protective of the brains/futures of our players than many teams would be.

[msqueri]

What a shock (not) that Stanford's star Freshman recruit is injured.

Do the Niners and Stanford drink the same water? Share the same S&C techniques? Something else?

Does Stanford have more injuries than the average College team? Or does it just seem worse cause they have no depth.

It seems bad because it's very unhelpfully concentrated in a very important position group (offensive line) and because fans always think their team has rotten luck, but Stanford may indeed be unluckier than most.

In terms of the number of absences overall, our top contributors (top 15 in snaps on either offense or defense) have missed 14 games, with 13 of those being on the offensive line. In essence, we have been incredibly decimated at offensive line and incredibly healthy otherwise. Overall, 2.33 key contributors out per game is almost exactly what my detailed off-season analysis of injury prevalence in the Pac-12 from 2014-2021 found was average for a Pac-12 team (2.37 average, 2.31 median). Given the grind of football I think it's more likely that the number would go up over the course of the season than go down, so for us to be right at the average midway through the season suggests that we are probably in line to be "unlucky" for the third straight consecutive season.

The overall point on injuries is something we can assess with more perspective in the off-season, but the OL absences are undoubtedly quite a string of bad luck.

P.S. Stanford's walking wounded OL rooms in 2019 and 2022 are unusual. OL is not a position that is historically extremely injury-prone. You'd expect intense attrition at positions like RB, WR, and DB, not OL.

P.P.S. Anecdotally, it seems like a pretty high number (majority?) of Stanford's OL issues are concussions. What may be happening is Stanford opting in to high OL attrition by being more protective of the brains/futures of our players than many teams would be.