Which injury hurt the most?

[PromisedLand]

I think it's pretty obvious we had a worse than average season in the injury department, and that it seems likely that if we had even an average year injury-wise that we might be in the Super Bowl today instead of waiting for next year. After a 10-0 start, we went 2-4 down the stretch as key player after key player missed games. If we win one more game (Miami? the regular season game in Denver?) yesterday's game is in Foxboro rather than Denver, and rather than a 2 point loss we probably win. But, which injury hurt the worst? Edelman missing most of the second half of the season? Solder? Gronk? Someone else?

 

[PF_SU]

While I have a hard time to decide on the injury since we had so many of them I settled on Dion Lewis in the end. Watching the game yesterday the difference between Lewis and White just became so apparent. Hard not to think that Lewis with his superior speed would've gotten one of those near-catches by a jumping White.

Moreover, Lewis' loss also hurt our run game. He - despite only playing in seven games of which he missed a part of the Redskins game and was clearly hobbled against Indianapolis - is still our second leading rusher at 234 yards (for 4.8 YPC). That's not comparable at all to White who rushed for only 56 yards (2.5 YPC) in the regular season and 16 yards (2.8 YPC) in the playoffs.

 

[Froob]

Probably Solder, although I'm not so sure he doesn't get eaten alive too. Lewis would have been very nice to have too.

 

[PromisedLand]

While I have a hard time to decide on the injury since we had so many of them I settled on Dion Lewis in the end. Watching the game yesterday the difference between Lewis and White just became so apparent. Hard not to think that Lewis with his superior speed would've gotten one of those near-catches by a jumping White.

Moreover, Lewis' loss also hurt our run game. He - despite only playing in seven games of which he missed a part of the Redskins game and was clearly hobbled against Indianapolis - is still our second leading rusher at 234 yards (for 4.8 YPC). That's not comparable at all to White who rushed for only 56 yards (2.5 YPC) in the regular season and 16 yards (2.8 YPC) in the playoffs.

Really good choice - I forgot about him! (Posted this at 8 am after getting only 5 hours sleep last night!) You can change your choice because I just added him to the poll.

 

[SHOWTIME15]

Solder's injury coupled with the inexperience on the interior o-line really hurt.

 

[Big-T]

Solder, by a country mile.

Him going down made both sides of the line worse and exposed how raw the interior is.

 

[I.M. Fletcher]

Solder for me. It just changed too many other dynamics on our team. Vollmer proved to be decent enough replacement in pass protection, but a massive downgrade in the running game. Cannon steps in for Vollmer, and represents a significant downgrade on the right side in pass protection. Now, we cant run to the left side, or get proper protection on the right.

With the very inexperienced interior line, they needed the tackles to be near perfect on the ends, and without solder, it became impossible.

 

[TheRazorsEdge]

Solder and not because its Bradys blind side, but because it forced the pats to play plug and play all across the line to try and figure out what would work. This seriously cost the line time needed to gel, gain experience as a unit. Instead most of the season we tried to plug leaks and every time we would successfully plug a leak- a new leak would pop up elsewhere...usually due to the movement all across the line. If nothing else, the Solder injury showed the brain trust that developing some tackles is an absolute must. Flemming and Cannon whiffed, in spots where'd you want to see your young guns make strides.