Injury Issues A Real Pain for Titans

Coach Mike Vrabel says players, coaches and training have to consider all angles in an attempt to reverse the trend from the last two seasons.

NASHVILLE – The Tennessee Titans won’t be going to the playoffs this season, but they maintained the same kind of dominance the team showed last year when it came to piling up injuries.

The Titans wound up using a league-high 86 players during the 2022 season, one year after topping the NFL with 91 participating players.

Per Spotrac, the Titans placed an NFL-high 33 players on injured reserve this season, five more than the second-place Denver Broncos and a whopping 26 more than the last-place Jacksonville Jaguars – who swept the Titans and won the AFC South this season.

In addressing the volume of injuries – and how the Titans can lessen the load on that front next season – coach Mike Vrabel touched on some ways he hopes to see improvement in 2023.

Here’s a closer look.

Better offseason conditioning by players

Vrabel returned to this theme on more than one occasion during his season-ending news conference on Monday, and he wasn’t afraid to call out individual players.

He noted, for instance, that starting cornerback Kristian Fulton and starting inside linebacker David Long both missed multiple games – this season and last season – due to soft-tissue injuries. Fulton was limited to 11 games this year because of hamstring and groin injuries, after missing four games last season with a hamstring issue. Long missed five games at the end of the 2022 season when he went on injured reserve with a hamstring injury, the same problem that caused him to miss seven games in 2021.

In comparison, Vrabel noted, safety Kevin Byard hasn’t missed a game in his seven years here – starting 105 of the 114 he’s played in since 2016.

“We look at soft-tissue injuries,” Vrabel said. “We look at those soft-tissue injuries of repeat offenders. It doesn’t take too hard to look and see Kristian Fulton and David Long, (that) they were repeat offenders in soft-tissue injuries.

“They have to figure out a way to train and act like … this game is played at high speed. Kevin Byard hasn’t pulled a hamstring since we’ve been here. There’s a durability factor to playing professional football that we should not overlook. That’s real. There’s guys that are durable and there’s guys that aren’t.”

Vrabel circled back to the theme when asked what advice he gave rookie quarterback Malik Willis for the offseason.

“Come back with a great attitude, with knowledge of what we’re doing offensively – being in shape,” Vrabel said. “That’s what I told all the young guys, that this isn’t a six-month job. If they don’t work harder between the next four months than they did to get here, there’s a whole new crop of players that are waiting to come into that spot. That’s the nature of this business, and that’s not a threat to anybody. That’s just what it is.”

Vrabel referenced offseason conditioning at least one more time when he talked about advice he might have for rookie receiver Treylon Burks over the next few months. Burks was limited during his initial offseason work because of asthma and poor conditioning.

“It’s just to understand that (playing football in the NFL) is not a six-month deal,” Vrabel said. “It’s year-round. He’s not taking any [pre-draft] trips to go see other teams (this offseason).

“I think he realizes what he can do if he’s in shape and he’s ready to go, and he’s big and healthy. He worked his tail off. He had some unfortunate injuries. He hurt the toe, had the concussion. But I’m excited to work with him. I’m excited for him and his future. It probably got off to a slow start, and that’s how you learn sometimes is by going through it.”

Adding the right players

Vrabel also hopes the organization can do a better job of bringing in players that don’t have injuries in their background.

He didn’t name any names, but two obvious examples are 2021 first-round draft pick Caleb Farley and 2021 free-agent signing Bud Dupree. Farley, a cornerback, had three surgeries – one to repair an ACL, two on his back – before the draft. He’s suffered two season-ending injuries with the Titans – a torn ACL and a herniated disc.

Dupree was 27 years old and coming off ACL surgery when the Titans signed him to a five-year deal worth up to $85 million. He’s been limited to 11 games in each of his first two years with the Titans.

“We’ve certainly brought some guys in, or had some guys, that have had some injury history,” Vrabel said. “I don’t know if that’s always a predictor of the future. In some cases, it maybe was. In some cases, it wasn’t.”

Continued training research

Vrabel didn’t lay much of the blame for injuries on his strength and conditioning staff.

In fact, he cited a number of ways trainers are trying to help players avoid injury.

For instance, the staff tracks the speed of players at practice – hoping to get them up to at least 90 percent of their maximum during some sessions, as opposed to having players go a full week between operating at high speed.

But Vrabel wants even more research done in that regard.

“The one thing I would be curious is … acceleration, as it tracks from injury,” Vrabel said. “We can get you up to 90 percent. But does it track zero to 15 (miles per hour) over 15 yards? How quick is a guy accelerating and how can we use that to help him recover from injury – what (is his baseline)?”

Vrabel singled out sports performance coordinator Brian Bell for the work he puts in with Titans coaches, so that Bell knows which exact drills to work with players in trying to get them back on the field.

That other factor

It’s hard to believe that conditioning levels or training methods can play a role in preventing some injuries – such as broken bones and ligament tears.

In that respect, Vrabel is simply hoping for better fortune.

“There’s a level of luck, I think,” Vrabel said. “It’s cyclical. We’ve had two awful years as it relates to injuries. Prior to that, it was at a level where you could say it was in the range of normal.”