Injury "Player Units" Results, 2001-2002

The scheme for rating injury values from the official NFL injury report released each week, was described in detail in the Evaluating Injuries article in the main research section.

The following charts show the full results against the spread by the three main ideas discussed for the past two seasons. We are currently attempting to build a ten year database of injury detail to further investigate the long term success of these stats against the point spread. There is also additional research that will be performed on the importance of player position in injury scoring, and the effect of a player's role (starter, key reserve, reserve).

Analysis: the main area of interest is the 4+ difference games, which have been a healthy 64% and relatively consistent in both years. Otherwise this would seem to be scoring design with the least potential for a number of reasons, elaborated on in the original article.

Analysis: it'a a solid method that hits close to 56% playing every game from week three on (with at least some difference in injury levels between the two teams). Still the emphasis needs to be on the big difference games, which we from the data looks to be at the 3+ threshold, where the results have been a spectacular 71% over the two years (much stronger in 2001, but still a more than acceptable 63% in 2002). What's nice is that in a two year span where underdogs were overwhelmingly stronger than favorites, the favored teams selected by this approach with the 3+ edge have gone a healthy 20-8.

Analysis: obviously some impressive line-beating performance. Home teams were especially dominant, with home underdogs invincible with the injury scores lined up in their favor during this period. Why away underdogs faltered with the advantage is unclear, and we will have to wait for the next round of testing with the bigger database to learn whether that is a genuine pattern.