Fencer
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- Oct 2, 2006
- Messages
- 14,293
- Reaction score
- 3,986
Injuries to top players
There have been badly injured teams before, with top players among those injured, who have wound up doing well. But this HAS gotten ridiculous.
While we can all disagree a little on ranking the Patriot players by importance, the following isn't too far off, and is supported by salaries, accolades and so on.
Brady -- healthy*
Gronkowski -- IR
Wilfork -- IR
Ch. Jones -- healthy*
Mayo -- IR
Talib -- in and out of lineup**
Mankins -- healthy*
Solder -- scary injured
Vollmer -- IR
McCourty -- has been healthy*, but hit hard today
Vereen -- in and out of the lineup**
Amendola -- in and out of the lineup**
*healthy = recognizing that every player gets banged up.
** in-and-out of the lineup = banged up even more than is normal even when you do play
Of those 12 guys, the count is
3 -- healthy
4 -- IR
3 -- in and out of the line-up
2 -- healthy until recently, but now has a head injury
And the story doesn't get much better on the next tier -- Ninkovich is healthy, Kelly is on IR, Arrington & Dennard have been in and out of the line-up ...
The Patriots can pretty literally claim to be playing at 50% strength. And yet they are one of the top teams in the league.
By the way -- by "one of the top" I mean 4th or so. Seattle, Carolina, and Denver all have reasonable claims to be ranked over the Patriots. To a lesser extent, so do the Bengals and Colts. But that's it.
There have been badly injured teams before, with top players among those injured, who have wound up doing well. But this HAS gotten ridiculous.
While we can all disagree a little on ranking the Patriot players by importance, the following isn't too far off, and is supported by salaries, accolades and so on.
Brady -- healthy*
Gronkowski -- IR
Wilfork -- IR
Ch. Jones -- healthy*
Mayo -- IR
Talib -- in and out of lineup**
Mankins -- healthy*
Solder -- scary injured
Vollmer -- IR
McCourty -- has been healthy*, but hit hard today
Vereen -- in and out of the lineup**
Amendola -- in and out of the lineup**
*healthy = recognizing that every player gets banged up.
** in-and-out of the lineup = banged up even more than is normal even when you do play
Of those 12 guys, the count is
3 -- healthy
4 -- IR
3 -- in and out of the line-up
2 -- healthy until recently, but now has a head injury
And the story doesn't get much better on the next tier -- Ninkovich is healthy, Kelly is on IR, Arrington & Dennard have been in and out of the line-up ...
The Patriots can pretty literally claim to be playing at 50% strength. And yet they are one of the top teams in the league.
By the way -- by "one of the top" I mean 4th or so. Seattle, Carolina, and Denver all have reasonable claims to be ranked over the Patriots. To a lesser extent, so do the Bengals and Colts. But that's it.