Health is one of the most important factors of success in football and sports. After all, as you get to the professional level of sports other factors begin to level out. Here me out. I am in no way saying health is the only factor that we should worry about, talent is still very important. Attributes like speed, quickness, power, agility, route running, football IQ and many others make some players simply better than others. Coaching strategies and team dynamics make some teams simply better than others and can turn organizations around and create dynasties with the right system and structure. However, if those players are on the sideline due to injury, they can use any of those attributes outside of football IQ to help teammates and their coaches can’t use them in game-planning which means that health is one of the most important factors of success in sport and because of that can be one of the most predictive.
We at The Predictors have made our lives about player health. With more than 100 years of NFL sideline experience as team physicians, athletic trainers, and physical therapists we have seen the injuries and know how they affect the players week to week. Our other passion is bringing that to other areas and proving how important team health can be and is why we created the Banged Up Score TM.
Years ago, The Predictors started creating the Team Banged Up ScoreTM or Team B.U.STM as we like to call it for short. The Team B.U.STM is a proprietary score that can quantify team health and be used as another tool in the belt for fantasy players, bettors, reporters, and football fans alike. It considers many factors including Injury, player depth and game status as well as a host of others. We put it into action with Fox Sports last year and brought it back and boy has it shined.
Here is every NFL team ranked from healthiest to least healthy going into Week 7 🩺 @sportsdocmatt pic.twitter.com/cbn1g5OW4L
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) October 23, 2022
You want proof? That I can do.
After 18 regular season weeks I wanted to see how the B.U.S did overall. I took the average ranking of each team’s score over 18 weeks to find out where they landed overall amongst the 32 total teams. To make it super simple I added up each teams B.U.S TM and divided by 18 to get their average. Turns out that the healthiest team (as determined by the B.U.S TM) in 6 of the 8 divisions made it to the playoffs. Three of those divisions had the top 2 healthiest teams make it. The AFC North and the NFC South were the only divisions where the healthiest teams missed the post season and one of those has Tom Brady in it so give us a break. Overall, the B.U.S TM has proven to show playoff teams reliably and has been so reliable in fact that it has picked the super bowl winner 6 out of 7 times.
The B.U.S TM is a tool we developed to show how important team health is and it is a way we can give back to the masses to prove our health theory but also help some people win fantasy leagues and games while we are at it. As we get further into the playoff health becomes more important because talent starts to even out the closer we get to the Super Bowl game.
The Predictors are hard at work developing some additional products that are going to show the impact health can have. I hope you are ready to jump on the health advantage because it’s only building. As I’ve said before the medical staff is vital to team success and we are out to prove that.
Make sure to check out updated B.U.S TM rankings this weekend on thepredictors.com and @SportsDocMatt to be in the know and always check out thepredictors.com for more on injury and performance.
