12 Down, 20 To Go
It’s been a highly discussed topic so far this season, but after 4 weeks of PTF football we have seen 12 starting quarterbacks hit the injury list already. I can’t say through all my years and leagues of Madden GM football that I have seen quite this severe hit on the main piece of every team’s offense in such a short span, and it looms as a shadow over every other team as a case of
when it will happen to them, and not
if it will happen. It’s a war of attrition that as a trend could see every team affected by season end, so the question looming over everyone’s head right now is: who of the remaining untouched 20 quarterbacks is next?
We can all try and speculate on the cause of this trend, but we’ll never be able to nail down the singular or compound reason for it, or if it is sheer bad luck up until this point and the injuries will smooth out from here on in. Some of the potential factors that could be influencing this outcome are:
- Offensive line blocking skills – across the league the best blockers would have low 90’s in either blocking skill. In general, an average blocker is mid-low 80’s blocking skills with awareness in the 70’s at best. Most teams who have fallen foul to a QB injury have at least one veteran presence on their o-line with a higher level of awareness and/or blocking skill, so there is no commonality across the teams that a lack of physical capability or progress-able skills is at the core for these injuries.
- Speed of defensive players, especially defensive line and linebackers – this Madden engine was made with a default range of physical skills for each position and a few outliers as the stars. We do have a few linebackers who truly eclipse that “standard” with speed that outshines many safeties and even corner backs in the league, but they are still few and far between, just like the fast defensive ends. Again, nothing stands out here
- Skill of quarterback and receivers to get open and/or make passes sooner rather than later into a play – the skill level of the quarterbacks getting injured is across the board from some of the most highly aware and accurate to a number of rookies, so nothing relatable here. The receivers on the other hand are another matter as most teams are lucky to have one receiver of decent capabilities and very few have the full combination of speed, mobility, awareness and hands. Most teams are relying on 1 or more 70-ish overall receivers as targets which may be resulting in the quarterbacks hanging onto the ball longer as these raw players can’t get open as effectively or efficiently as needed.
- Gameplans – a few West Coast & 49ers, a couple of Rams, Broncos and Lions playbooks used. Run/Pass sliders and aggressiveness are a complete mixed bag, so nothing really compares from this angle either.
- League settings/sliders – I haven’t looked at these nor compared them to previous leagues from recent years, but I’m assuming no massive changes that would lead to QBs getting pumped more often.
- Calhoupe’s Madden Script – recent comments on Discord have suggested that games run under various settings of Calhoupe’s script appear to have different outputs. That would be an interesting fact to pursue, but I’ve run enough simulations on my own machine prior to the use of Calhoupe’s, and then seen our broadcasters produce completely different results to know that Madden is a fickle bitch in this regard anyway.
The injuries and severities have been varied, ranging from out for the season for the Chiefs Trent Green, down to 2 weeks for Jacksonville’s Mark Brunell. At least half the injuries have been arm related, which poses another problem of lingering injuries even though the injured arm in question is never really distinguished. The way the Madden gods behave we never know if a 2-week injury hangs around into questionable or doubtful for weeks to follow and may be related to if it is actually a throwing arm issue or not. With quarterbacks needing healthy arms to ply their trade successfully it is quite common that collarbone, shoulder, bicep, or elbow injuries can take a while to come right to a point where the player is healthy enough to return to the field. There is an outside chance that they’ll play under questionable or doubtful claims with reduced throwing power as the offset, but again you’ve got more luck predicting the outcome of Russian roulette than this. The first player listed to return from injury is my own Mark Brunell, coming off a torn pectoral in one more week (allegedly), so we’ll see exactly how long that injury takes to “heal” on a quarterback this time around.
The injury list at the end of week 4 looks like this:
Trent Green – Torn Shoulder
Brooks Bollinger – Torn Bicep
Kerry Collins – Abdominal Tear
Chris Simms – Broken Tailbone
David Carr – Broken Collarbone
Carson Palmer – Dislocated Elbow
Jeff Blake – Broken Ribs
Michael Vick – Partially Torn MCL
Brian St. Pierre – Torn Shoulder
Patrick Ramsey – Bruised Shoulder
Kliff Kingsbury – Abdominal Tear
Mark Brunell – Torn Pectoral
Right now if your quarterback hasn’t been injured, my suggestion would be pucker up and hope for the best!
