Football Outsiders have now published the results for Adjusted Games Lost splits by unit. This gives us another chance to see if there's any truth to the idea that Kelly's teams suffer more injuries as a result of his quick pace and especially whether or not it hurts his defenses as they get tired.

As mentioned below, the overall trend has been good for the Eagles under Kelly's sport science approach with the fewest games lost in 2013, the fifth least in 2014 and ranked sixth last year.

Their offensive ranks are: 2013: 8th, 2014: 18th, 2015: 10th

So no problems there, averaging 12th with no catastrophic years, on to the defense. Here they ranked 3rd in 2013, 2nd in 2014 but fell to 17th in Kelly's final season in Philly. That's a dip but only down to league average, it's certainly not evidence that Kelly's up tempo approach leads to more injuries. The primary culprit seems to be the line backing corps, who lost the fourth most games in the NFL last year.

Even so, the sports science methods do seem to have helped keep the Eagles out of the training room.

........................ This is the post I wrote earlier in the week.........................



Football Outsiders have just released their Adjusted Games Lost headline figure for 2015. Fooch has pointed out that the niners suffered more than their share of injuries, ranking 26th in the number of player games lost to injury.

However, I'm more interested in whether or not Chip Kelly's emphasis on using a sports science approach continued to keep the Eagles relatively healthy even though they run more plays than other teams. Jennifer Lee Chan posted a good article describing Kelly's approach back in January, it's a full spectrum deployment of accelerometers, individual diet plans, bespoke smoothies and even extends to testing players urine to monitor hydration levels.

Well it looks like he might be on to something; after losing the fewest games to injury in the league in his first year in Philly* and the fifth fewest in his second year, the Eagles ranked sixth in AGL last year. There's always a large amount of noise in this data because there is an inevitable degree of randomness involved in when players break bones, suffer concussions or tear soft tissue. However, three healthy seasons in a row is still an encouraging trend, even if it is probably too soon the day Kelly's methods are truly effective.

But maybe all the smoothies, stretches and pee tests really are worthwhile.

* For the purpose of comparison the Eagles were 18th in AGL the year before Kelly arrived.