Stats show a revealing stat about the Ravens injury woes in 2021
By Justin Fried
The Baltimore Ravens were hit with an unprecedented string of injuries in 2021, and even with the painful 2015 season in the rearview mirror, it’s hard to imagine a more unfortunate season than this past one.
The Ravens saw the likes of Marcus Peters, Ronnie Stanley, J.K. Dobbins, Gus Edwards, Marlon Humphrey, L.J. Fort, Derek Wolfe, DeShon Elliott, and countless others lost to season-ending injuries over the course of the year.
It wasn’t just the sheer quantity of injuries the Ravens suffered but the quality of those players lost. You could field an entire NFL starting lineup with just those lost to injury in 2021.
But just how injured were the Ravens compared to other teams around the league? A revealing graph from “Man Games Lost” on Twitter shows just how unlucky the Ravens were and really adds context to the situation.
The Ravens were more injured than every other NFL team
NFL end of 2021 regular season injury plot. Games missed to injuries versus team wins. Bubble size represents cumulative quality of players lost (Lost-av metric) https://t.co/ILv7Y4ZcaH pic.twitter.com/z0oPcldiW2
— Man Games Lost NFL (@ManGamesLostNFL) January 13, 2022
As the above graph illustrates, the Ravens finished second behind the New York Giants in cumulative games lost. But the great part about this graph is that it accounts for quality as well as quantity.
The Ravens’ bubble on that chart is larger than any other team’s indicating that not only did they lose more cumulative games than all but one team, but they lost more quality due to injury than any team in the NFL.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise either.
Pro Bowlers Marcus Peters and Ronnie Stanley played just one combined game this season. Dobbins and Edwards didn’t play at all, and the same is true for Fort and Wolfe.
Meanwhile, star quarterback Lamar Jackson missed the final four games of the season. All-Pro cornerback Marlon Humphrey missed the final five games. Every good player on the Ravens roster seemed to miss considerable time at a point.
That’s just how it went for the Ravens this season. Ravens fans didn’t need a graph of analytics to show that their team was ridiculously injured in 2021, but this does help quantify things.
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No team was more adversely affected by injuries this season than the Ravens. That’s not just an opinion either, it’s an objective fact.