Phil Steele ran down every team’s injuries and the Orange came out on top (bottom?)
It’s no secret that the Syracuse Orange have suffered a lot of injuries in recent years -- specifically in the time since joining the ACC. This offseason’s already dealt us our fair share of those as well, with Aaron Roberts being lost for the season, and Steven Clark and Josh Allen both getting medically disqualified.
In his annual season preview materials, Phil Steele tabulates how many starts teams lose due to injury. And for 2016, he notes that the Orange lost the highest percentage of any team in college football -- all the way up at 18.9 percent.
SU’s total (50) was slightly lower than Tennessee’s, but the Vols played an additional game as well. Eight different teams lost 40 or more starts to injury last season, including SU, Tennessee, SMU, Oklahoma, Eastern Michigan, BYU and Utah. Notably, just Syracuse and SMU missed a bowl as a result, however.
We’ve discussed last year’s injuries extensively, but it’s worth noting that WHO is injured also matters greatly -- even more than the percentages. A struggling secondary lost 20 total starts with Antwan Cordy and Juwan Dowels going down. Injuries across the offensive line added another 10, at least. And of course, Eric Dungey missing the last three games hurt immensely.
Interestingly, the Orange were the only ACC team with truly poor injury luck last year, though. The closest to SU percentage-wise was Miami, at 11.7 percent. Wake Forest and North Carolina were at 10.8 percent, and every other conference school lost less than 10 percent of starts to injury. Virginia Tech, Louisville and Boston College had some of the country’s lowest percentages of lost starts.
Injuries are part individual, part strength and conditioning and part circumstantial luck. So while it seems like the conference overall avoided injuries last year, there could be a regression to the mean there. That theory hasn’t worked for Syracuse in recent years, but perhaps this is the year that finally turns around a bit.
