NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Tennessee Titans were banged up in 2014 and it was one ingredient in why things were so bad.
The offensive line was hardly humming before guys started to fall, but with four starts from Byron Stingily, three from Will Svitek and three from Jamon Meredith the Titans didn’t have much of a chance to be very good up front.
A load of injuries at one position all at once can be a killer. The Titans were without all three of their top tackles -- Michael Roos, Taylor Lewan and Michael Oher -- as well as their starting center, Brian Schwenke, for all five games to end the season.
That certainly counts against them more than the same number of injuries equally distributed among positions and testing the next man up, not the fourth and fifth men up.
We are acknowledging that context. Other teams had numerous injuries at one spot; others were surely more fortunate.
Separate of whether injuries were in clusters or not, the Titans didn’t qualify as one of the most injured teams in the NFL in 2014, per the research of Football Outsiders.
Football Outsiders has an adjusted-games-lost metric that incorporates not just games missed, but whether they were missed by starters, replacements or bench guys. It also factors in injury reports to account for guys playing at less than their best.
Tennessee had 79.7 adjusted games lost, not much worse than the league average of 74.3.
Overall, the Titans ranked 22nd in the league. They were 22nd on offense (38.8) and 19th on defense (40.9).
Ten teams were worse off, including the AFC South-winning Indianapolis Colts.
The Titans certainly had worse luck on the injury front in 2014 than they did the previous season. In Ken Whisenhunt’s first season as coach, the Titans drop ped 35.8 games in the category.
Depth is crucial in the NFL. Even the healthiest team, Denver, lost 36.9 games.
While the front end of the Titans’ roster needs work, let’s not discount the necessity of better backups, too.
