09-01-2016, 02:49 PM
(08-27-2016, 10:00 PM)jason Wrote: Exactly. People seem to forget that there was a couple year period where Gronk couldn't stay healthy. Hell, he missed a game or two last year. Eifert is far from fragile. Remember when he took that head shot vs Pittsburgh last year? A few plays later he was dragging their secondary down the field for a first down... While he was concussed.
Yep, and it's not limited to just Gronk. I compiled a list in a different Eifert thread of somewhere around 20 TEs and the various injuries they all had. I honestly can't remember it all, but some of the notable names were:
Jordan Reed
Jordan Cameron
Gronk
Gates
Graham
Kelce
Pitta
Dwayne Allen
Julius Thomas
Ladarius Green
Kyle Rudolph
Sefarian-Jenkins
John Carlson
Jermichael Finley
Dustin Keller
Jace Amaro
Niles Paul
Zach Miller
Heck, just type "tight end injuries" into google and look through a few pages. It's brutal.
Sure, you could nitpick and say most of these guys missed a smaller percentage of games than Eifert, but the point is that lots of these guys missed significant chunks of their careers due to injury. It's a rough position. That said, it's still very early in Eifert's career and it's very possible that he's just had a string of bad luck. I remember back when most wanted to keep Leon over JJo because "JJo was made of glass". Well we all know how that turned out. Leon suddenly turned "brittle" and JJo has missed 4 games in his last 5 seasons.
Either way, 13 games of Eifert > 16 games of the types of TEs we've had in the previous 15 years or so.
The training, nutrition, medicine, fitness, playbooks and rules evolve. The athlete does not.
