Packer Central

Did Injuries Help Sink Packers? Here’s the Data

Injuries provided an excuse for the Packers' end-of-season failures in 2020 and 2021. How about this season?

Bill Huber

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GREEN BAY, Wis. – In 2020, David Bakhtiari’s late-season ACL tear might have cost the Green Bay Packers a trip to the Super Bowl. In 2021, Bakhtiari, Elgton Jenkins and Robert Tonyan were out with torn ACLs when the Packers were one-and-done in the playoffs.

In 2022, there were no such excuses.

The Packers were one of the healthiest teams in the NFL but went only 8-9 and were none-and-done in the playoffs.

Green Bay lost star outside linebacker Rashan Gary to a torn ACL and second-year cornerback Eric Stokes to an ankle injury during a midseason loss to the Lions. Otherwise, the Packers took a mostly healthy roster into their season-ending loss to Detroit.

According to ManGamesLost.com, a subscription site that tracks injuries in the NFL and other sports, the Packers lost the third-fewest games to injury. Of the five healthiest teams, only Green Bay failed to reach the postseason. The others? Jacksonville was No. 1, Kansas City was No. 2, Buffalo was No. 4 and Philadelphia was No. 5.

Green Bay was clobbered by injuries in 2021, not just by number but by significance. Not in 2022. Man Games Lost uses metrics called Lost-av, which weighs the impact of injuries based on how a player played the previous season, and Lost-wav, which weighs the impact of injuries based on the totality of a player’s career.

Based on quality of player rather than quantity, the Packers in 2022 were the ninth-healthiest based on Lost-av and seventh-healthiest based on Lost-wav.

Contrast that to 2021, when they were the second-most injured based on Lost-av and fifth-most injured based on Lost-wav because Bakhtiari (first), Za’Darius Smith (second) and Jaire Alexander (ninth) ranked among the 10 biggest injuries of the year.

Green Bay finished the season with only Gary, Stokes, defensive tackle Dean Lowry and offensive lineman Jake Hanson on injured reserve.

According to league data, Green Bay used only 65 players this season, fifth-fewest in the league.

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.

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