Bears’ turnaround aided by much better luck with injuries by Michael David Smith
What was the biggest factor in the Bears’ turnaround in 2018? Trading for All-Pro pass rusher Khalil Mack? Hiring Coach of the Year Matt Nagy? The development of their young starting quarterback, Mitchell Trubisky?
Or was it just the dumb luck of not suffering many significant injuries?
FootballOutsiders.com uses an advanced metric called “adjusted games lost” to show which teams were hurt the most by injuries. The metric incorporates not only how many games were missed by players on any team, but also whether those games were missed by starters or backups, and also which teams had a lot of players who were at less than 100 percent because they missed practice during the week with injuries. It’s probably the single best metric to answer the question, “How healthy was this team?”
And the answer is, the Bears were very healthy in 2018. After being very unhealthy in 2017.
Chicago ranked as the third-healthiest team in the NFL in 2018, after ranking 31st in 2017. No team in the NFL improved more on the injury front than the Bears last season.
Unfortunately for the Bears, staying healthy is mostly a matter of getting lucky, and teams that have a sudden improvement in their health often regress toward the mean the following season. The Bears may have to count on their roster depth more this season than they did last season.
I think injuries will be a HUGE factor in how the NFCN ends up. There have been a number of seasons where a healthy Bears team in September looked like a playoff team. But after a ton of key injuries the team looked like crap by November. Last year the Bears had a remarkably healthy team most of the season. They won the division. We are already dealing with injuries a bit. Ha Ha Dix the new CB signed for this season just went on PUP. Didn't even make it to training camp... got injured in the mandatory practices a few weeks ago.
How good will the Packers be this season? They've added some good defensive pieces and the D should be significantly better. I re-watched the Bears/Packers game from last year and even with the Packers decimated with injuries (it was game 15 and they were really hurting at that point) they came close to winning that game. Mostly due to Aaron Rodgers making crazy good plays and making "something out of nothing" that day.
Thursday Night Football opens up with the Bears/Packers. That will be a huge game and answer a lot of questions I have about both teams.