Spot potential fantasy busts with Draft Sharks’ Injury Predictor
Fantasy football is inherently frustrating, but nothing – nothing – is worse than when one of your players gets injured, especially if they were an early-round draft pick who was at the top of the preseason leaderboard. Some fantasy owners employ a drafting strategy that avoids potentially injury-prone busts, but narrowing down which players to red-highlight on your 2022 draft cheat sheet isn’t easy.
Luckily, Draft Sharks has an industry-leading injury prediction tool that lets you know each player’s full injury history. From there you can see a risk factor, the chance a player will get injured during the season and the chance of getting injured in each game. Perhaps most importantly, a scheduled game was missed. Try it below for free!
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Let’s break down how best to use the Draft Sharks’ Injury Predictor using Christian McCaffrey as an example. He’s one of the top first-round injury concerns of 2022. According to the Injury Predictor tool, McCaffrey has been injured six times since college (ankle, hamstring, buttock, shoulder, ankle, hip) and he has an 84 percent chance of injury this year ( 10.2 percent chance in each game). In all, he’s expected to miss 2.2 games, but there’s clearly a risk of more.
Is McCaffrey too risky to be selected in the first round? That’s up for debate, but at least you have all the data and insight you need to make a more informed decision.
The Injury Predictor is really handy when choosing between two similar players. If you’re a particularly risk-averse owner, you may always choose a player who is likely to miss fewer games. Back to McCaffrey, he’s being drafted straight to Dalvin Cook this year. Cook is also known for his injury woes, but he hasn’t missed nearly as many games as McCaffrey over the past two seasons (23 versus six). So Cook is “safer,” right?
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Maybe not. According to the Draft Sharks’ Injury Predictor, Cook has had a whopping 12 injuries in his career, which contributes to his 94 percent risk factor. Overall, Cook is expected to miss 3.6 games in 2022, almost 1.5 more than McCaffrey.
Obviously no one knows exactly what’s going to happen this season – and you could still choose to draft Cook instead of McCaffrey – but having one more tool in your arsenal, especially one that comes in handy when it comes to the most unpredictable part of fantasy… Football helps is extremely valuable.
We invite you to watch the Draft Sharks’ Injury Predictor for free, here on Sporting News. Not only is it an invaluable tool on draft day, but it can also be helpful throughout the season when researching how long players with certain types of ailments typically miss out.
Dominate your draft with Draft Sharks War Room: Try it FREE for a week
This is a page to revisit as new injuries surface and new players appear on your radar.