Injury Prevention

Edition #644

Good morning! ☕

Yesterday the media attended their final OTA and there were a fair few players missing including most of the defensive line and the likes of Breece Hall. Haason Reddick was also absent again and Saleh confirmed that they hadn’t really had any contact, which is a touch strange in my mind.

Today we’re going to take a look at some injury numbers and ask the question, did the Jets injuries get worse after the new athletic and performance department were formed.

🟢 Centre Joe Tippmann has been speaking to the official website about how he’s learning to lead: "This offseason I really focused on how I can help be a guide for guys," Tippmann said during the second week of OTAs. "Just learning how to lead the guys better, kind of be a better presence in the offensive huddle. I think I am ready for that” He went on to talk about Rodgers “Aaron, he's a great presence in the huddle," Tippmann said. "And then outside the huddle, he's always making recommendations. He doesn't just tell me, he teaches me. Something that I messed up or didn't understand, he's going to run it back and explain it to me how he sees it. It's something that's really helped me."

⚪ Aaron Rodgers is back to his best mentally, but says he still has 10% to go physically: "Mentally, I'm there," he said. "Physically, I just got to get that confidence to let it loose and I'm getting close to that. It's a process. Anytime you come back from injury whether it's an extremity or internal or even a concussion, there are certain benchmarks you need to hit in order to feel better and each one has its own challenges. These practices, the first two, have helped. I feel much better today than I did yesterday and I'm sure I'll feel better next week, and the following week and training camp will be great. And at some point, it will just be a distant memory and I'll feel like 100 percent myself. Right now, I'm 90 percent% myself and 10 percent not sure what's going on with various parts of my body."

🟢 I won’t go through all the observations from OTA’s yesterday but I did scan the reports to pick out some players who were making an impression. Braelon Allen, Malachi Corley (but he also had a drop), Xavier Gipson and of course Aaron Rogers. Eric Watts also had a would-be sack on Rodgers and by all accounts, he continues to impress, the one benefit of not having most of you defensive linemen out there.

⚫ Former Jets star Nick Mangold was at OTA’s yesterday and he was seen giving tips and suggestions to 2nd round player Joe Tippmann. There’s nobody better suited to coach up Joe Tippmann. If Joe becomes even half the player Mangold was, we’ll all be pretty damn happy.

🛩️ Three years ago Joe Douglas realised that the Jets had a major problem with injuries. He created the athletic care and performance department in an effort to reduce the # of games missed by Jets players.

Although a study by Athlete Game Lost concluded that the Jets weren’t anywhere close to being the worst hit team between 2009-2022. If you look at the chart below we are in the middle of the pack and based on our ‘bubble size’ we weren’t missing our best players either. Obvious these numbers don’t include 2023, which saw Aaron Rodgers go down, the single most important player on the roster.