I mean, look at Parker....he spent his first three seasons on IR and it was largely attributed to not eating right, not hydrating right, not stretching right, etc. Was he "injury prone"? No. Did he have above average injuries because he didn't take care of himself? Yes. And that basically makes him fit the definition of injury prone.

Tua has been hurt and missed games every single season his entire life. Every high school year....every college year....I'm sorry, but that's injury prone. Maybe it's not fair and maybe he never gets hurt again, but a guy can't get hurt seven seasons in a row and then expect to be injury-free against even higher competition.

I mean, if you flipped a quarter seven times and every toss landed on tails...there'd be some that would swear the next flip has to come out heads. Others would question the quarter itself though and demand you flip a different coin, and I think that's what is going to happen with Tua. Does that make him injury prone? No....yes....it honestly doesn't matter because perceptions become reality.

 

I'm not convinced the recent news has changed Tua's draft stock. I still think he's going top 6. Most of that stuff teams knew about long time ago anyway. So this "perception" change I think is mostly fans and media, not teams, though we'll see based on where Tua is taken.

Only thing I don't want is to see is him fall enough for Belichick to take him.

 

What I got out of that is that Dr. Chao thinks Tua puts himself into situations where he gets hurt, but is not injury prone. The issue is that Tua has yet to learn how to avoid getting injured -it certainly won't be easier in the NFL to learn what he failed to learn in High School or College.

 

I'm still convinced that he will be on the board at #5....unless we foolishly move up to take him at #3. It is entirely possible that Miami leaked the "failed medicals" so another team wouldn't jump ahead of them- if that's true, then props to them. Or if it wasn't us, then maybe it was another team with the same intentions sitting at 6-8.

There's absolutely no possible way to know....but teams do spook easily when it comes to a top-5 pick. They search so hard for a red flag that sometimes it's invented out of nothing. Just look at Tunsil- best tackle in the draft and he was free-falling over a two year old bong video. Every team should have seen that months before the draft but somehow it spooked 6-7 teams to pass on him. I don't think the truth matters here because the caution by GM's will be real either way.

By the way, grats on not commenting on my coin-flipping analogy! Anytime I write something with probabilities, I pause to make sure it will meet your approval. I actually re-phrased it a little to avoid your math wrath. =)

 

Some players have play styles and or body composition and dynamics that make them more prone to injury. Not every player has the same bone/tendon/ligament/muscle density. Some players are just built more sturdilly than others and can take more punishment withought breaking something.

Trying to deny that there is such a thing as being injury prone is ridiculous.

 

Perhaps, but in regards to the hip injury, it was a freak injury and as the doctor points out, not one that any player could withstand.

 

I'm no doctor but aware that lower back and hip injuries are on top of the red flags for drafting or signing any player.
HUGE red flag as close to a automatic pass as it gets.

 

Tua has also had "contact" injuries even one of the ankles...those are different from soft tissue non contact issues.

 

The one thing I would say to this is that the injuries did change Tua’s draft stock because if he doesn’t get hurt is he going #1? There would be a legit argument to that whether it would happen or not.

 

The broken wrist claims were false.

 

Here's what Lombardi actually said-

If he made that up and Tua falls 5-10 slots because of it (or even further), he'd have a slam-dunk slander lawsuit worth millions. So Lombardi has to believe it's true anyway....that doesn't make it true though. I would assume he had a really strong source to say something that condemning to the media; he doesn't appear to be a foolish man.

At the same time though, if the report is false, then why isn't Tua or his agent saying it's false? I can't find anything like that anywhere online of them denying the claim. So for now, I'm assuming it's a true statement OR the Dolphins leaked it while promising Tua to take him at #5 if he didn't deny it.

 

I dont see how it's even debatable.

Look up the definition of prone. It means

1.
likely to or liable to suffer from, do, or experience something, typically something regrettable or unwelcome.

So injury prone in this context means more likely to be injured than the average player.

It doesnt matter WHY he is injured. The fact that he has been so many times, dating back to broken wrists, you can easily say he is more prone to injury than his peers because it's a reality that has already unfolded.