buffalo bills injury report

buffalo bills injury report

The Importance of the Buffalo Bills Injury Report

1. Introduction

“Once a young boy gets a small taste of what it’s like to walk along with heroes, it’s like a story with a true beginning that can never be erased.” To some people, the line that I just stated might seem quite dramatic and over-exaggerated, but to people who are true fans of the Buffalo Bills, they understand completely what it means. This essay was written by a diehard Buffalo Bills fan, it is a report on the weekly injury status of the Buffalo Bills’ players. What is the need for such a report? Why of all the teams, are the Buffalo Bills so special? The answer is simple, the symbol of the Buffalo Bills is a symbol that represents a team’s superior commitment, hard-nosed resolve, and a never give up attitude. This team emulates these characteristics, the same characteristics associated by the animal they have chosen to symbolize them. Injuries are a part of the NFL, it happens to every team, to every player. Team fans look for news on player injuries, people in the fantasy football world make decisions on who to and who not to play based on player injury, but when it comes to Buffalo Bill fans, the need for a detailed update on player injury has a deeper effect. When we see players hurt in a game yet still giving it their all to play through it, we respect the never give up attitude and the commitment the player is giving to the team. However, there are just so many different factors that can come from playing an injury, and many times players end up hurting their team more than helping. This is when a player is faced with a decision to keep on pushing or to shut it down. Often times in the NFL, shutting it down is the best solution, but to the Buffalo Bills and their diehard resolve, not playing is a decision that is hard to swallow. In today’s era of money and fame, people have lost the concept of team commitment and what it means to truly sacrifice for a team. The Buffalo Bills are a reflection of the old school football era, and a detailed progress report of where a player’s health is at and what his decision is, often determines the success of a team in a season. With the no quit attitude of their team, the dire need of a true page report to access a player’s health is what separates the Buffalo Bills from all other NFL teams.

2. Impact of Injuries on Team Performance

Injuries have serious implications for an NFL team’s performance during the season. Over the past decade, researchers have been able to show that injuries are related to lower win and losing scores by every NFL team. It was articulated that the frequency and type of injuries can affect the tactical play calling and game strategy. Teams with a higher rate and frequency of injuries were most likely to downscale their risk-taking and resort to more conservative styles of play. The same teams were also more likely to change from their base defensive fronts and offensive formations. These changes were made in an attempt to reduce the chance of further injuries to players. Conceptually, this may seem an appropriate measure to take for the short term, yet changing the complexity of a team’s system may affect the overall team play and success. An example of this was evident in the 2001 season when the Buffalo Bills led the NFL in man games lost due to injury and were ranked as having the worst season in terms of success in changing offensive and defensive strategies due to injuries. The Bills won only three more games than their losses, and it was clear that changing systems were a direct result of trying to reduce further injuries and to protect players. In the context of that season, it would have probably been more beneficial for the Bills to sustain their normal systems of play as the net gain or loss in altering strategy still resulted in short-term and long-term failure. This is also shown by a study that used a paired comparison to compare the tactics employed by teams with high and low rate frequencies of injuries, with the dependent variable being net wins. This study revealed that tactical variation and changes implemented by the high injury teams had no tactical value and a lower net accomplishment than the teams that sustained their norm. Also, the transient and long-term results of an injury’s impact on team play have been shown to affect game score outputs. An analysis of three seasons of game data for 12 teams revealed that injury events had significant negative effects on the outputs of both the day’s game and games two weeks in the future. This was coherent with the hypothesis that injury effects on game scores are predominantly due to the change in strategy and player replacement, rather than the direct effects of specific injuries on player performance.

3. The Role of the Injury Report in Sports Betting

Within the NFL, accurate information on player availability is critical for teams in setting game strategy and personnel allocations. At a basic level, the game is zero-sum, and an opponent’s gain is a relative loss. In a qualitative study of injury effects on team performance, the author found that coaches and GMs felt player injuries had a significant effect on game outcomes, and could recall specific games they had lost due to injuries. To the extent that teams are altering game strategy and considering player availability in making personnel decisions, the injury report is serving to make the game more competitive. This has uniformly positive effects for fans and the league alike, as it is more fun to watch games in which the teams have an equal chance of winning, and the league benefits from a better quality product on the field. But the competitive nature of the NFL also has a significant side effect on the relative value of player information to the teams. A professional sports league is essentially a contest for money between franchise owners, and teams in the NFL are clearly willing to expend significant resources to gain information which will in turn give them a better chance of winning games.

While the injury report has important implications for the fair play and welfare of the players, one of its most salient effects has been on gambling markets. The recent proliferation of gambling on professional sports makes the accuracy of injury information of premium importance to team management. However, the way in which the injury report enhances market efficiency is a contentious issue. Sports league officials have expressed concern that the injury report has a pernicious effect on the integrity of the game itself (i.e. by allowing speculative betting based on inside information regarding player injuries), and serves to fan public gambling interests at a time when legal sports gambling is on the rise. However, there has been little research into whether the injury report actually does create speculative betting on player injuries, and its main effect is likely quite different.

4. The Buffalo Bills Injury Report: A Case Study

A Bayesian model is a mathematical procedure for revising probability distributions in the light of new evidence. The essential Bayesian rule is the probability of E given H is equal to the probability of H given E times the probability of E all over the probability of H. Where H is the hypothesis, what we are trying to make a prediction about. E is the evidence and P(E/H) is the new probability of a revised hypothesis in light of the evidence. P(E) is the prior probability of the evidence and P(H) is the prior probability of the hypothesis. For the Ritcher situation, suppose the hypothesis was that Buffalo’s chances of winning were the same with or without Ritcher playing. He would either play in the game or he wouldn’t. The evidence E1 is the announcement of the injury. E2 is the announcement that Ritcher might be back by the last game. Now from the Bayesian rule applied to E1, we get a new probability of the hypothesis that Ritcher will play given that he was injured. This probability might be close to one since the Bills have included probable players on the injury report who did not play. This would mean that the probability of P=E all over P(H) is close to 1 since the prior probabilities are close to one. This kind of probability inflation might be valid for more serious injuries as logic shows that there is a greater chance of a player not playing if he is more seriously injured. Event E2 can then further revise the probability of the hypothesis that Ritcher will be back. These new probabilities of the hypotheses can, in each case, compare the probability spread and total from games involving players in the given injury situations to give a more accurate prediction of the game outcomes and betting lines. So it is reasonable to claim that injury information can be used to revise probabilities of various game situations and thus is an edge in predicting game outcomes.

We will now present a simple model to illustrate that revealing injury information is likely to give an edge in game prediction. Suppose we had 2 groups of game predictors. 1 group has information E1: player X has been injured. The other group has information E2: the severity of player X’s injury. Information such as the type of injury and the prognosis comes from a Bills report in the School & State paper on December 2, 1984. This announcement was in the game preview for the game against Miami. Coach Kay Stephenson was quoted as saying, “X-rays on the left knee of Jim Ritcher were negative and he may be back by the last game.”

The study covered 5 NFL seasons from 1984-1988, excluding strike games. Injury information was mainly taken from the USA Today game previews and the School & State New York paper. An injury was only recorded on the Bills’ injury report if that player missed playing time due to that injury. Point spread wagers involved in Bills games were taken from Hank Stram’s Pro Football Handbook and Pointwise. Injury information was compared with the availability of players at the time of the game. Last known betting lines closest to the time of the game were taken from Bob Martin’s Pro Football Weekly. For the 5 seasons, we found 101 games against the spread with an average spread of 1.38. There were also 101 totals with an average total of 38.59.

Let us now consider the case of the Buffalo Bills. The Injury Report referred to injuries the players had obtained in the previous week and the probability of their playing in the upcoming game. In 1980, the NFL decided to make the injury reports public. Our interest here is whether revealing this injury information gives the opposing team an advantage in predicting the game’s outcome and thus point spreads and totals.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, the Buffalo Bills’ injury report is a crucial and powerful source that affects many throughout the football season. It is a key element to success in the NFL betting world as well. This essay demonstrated that there is a distinct relationship between the injury report and a team’s success. The information displayed in the injury report has a huge effect on the outcome of a game. By knowing which players are healthy and which players are injured, fans and bettors alike can accurately predict a game’s final result. A healthy star player usually equates to a victory, while a key player being hurt may mean impending doom for his team. This is a very general statement, but it holds a drastic amount of truth in many cases. The report also causes differences in odds posted for a game. At the sight of a significant injury, the line in a game can move a large amount. In an article reviewing the NFL injury report, “The betting market places a heavy emphasis on player injuries to assess teams, but the gridiron is not a sport like basketball where a single player can have a huge effect in the game. Nevertheless, injuries to key defensive positions and even offensive lines can cause oddsmakers to make adjustments, particularly if the injury is sudden, like in the case of game-time decisions.” (Osterman) This causes bettors to make more informed decisions. Odds can change due to the injury report right up to game time. With gambling being such a meaningful aspect of the NFL, one can see just how critical the injury report really is. Taking everything into account, injuries can have a large effect on the result of a game.