The unfortunate January knee injury to Pro Bowl wide receiver Zay Flowers overshadowed the overall truth about the Ravens in 2024.
They stayed remarkably healthy, which made another unfulfilling postseason more difficult to take as general manager Eric DeCosta’s efforts to shape the 2025 roster will now pick up with the start of the new league year next week. You can make as many shrewd roster moves as you want, but few factors hurt a team’s championship hopes more than your biggest stars being unavailable. Baltimore mostly avoided that in 2024 after Ronnie Stanley, Mark Andrews, and Marlon Humphrey missed extensive time in 2023 and two-time MVP quarterback Lamar Jackson missed the final games of both the 2021 and 2022 seasons.
Of the starters listed on the Week 1 depth chart in 2024, only nose tackle Michael Pierce spent time on injured reserve and only five others missed a game due to injury and none of those missed more than two. Just seven players concluded the season on injured reserve, and of those, reserve cornerbacks Arthur Maulet and Jalyn Armour-Davis and return specialist Deonte Harty were the most prominent.
A closer look reveals the 2024 Ravens were pretty clearly the NFL’s healthiest team and one of the healthiest in franchise history. That continues a trend that follows well-documented changes to the strength and conditioning staff two years ago when the Ravens fired Steve Saunders and promoted assistant Scott Elliott to strength and conditioning coordinator. They hired current head certified athletic trainer Adrian Dixon in 2022.
For team-by-team comparisons, we often see the number of players on IR cited, but that doesn’t provide much insight. How many injuries were to starters and prominent reserves compared to seldom-used backups or training camp bodies who never had a practical chance of making the team? How many went on IR early in the season compared to December? And what about individuals playing through ailments compared to teams featuring cleaner injury reports most weeks?
Courtesy of Aaron Schatz of FTN Network (and formerly Football Outsiders), a metric called adjusted games lost tries to quantify the degree to which teams were impacted by injuries. Instead of merely counting the games lost for each player on IR, the metric weighs the projected role for each injured player — starter, key reserve, bench-warmer, etc. — and also accounts for those listed on weekly injury reports and potentially playing at less than 100%. In other words, the metric doesn’t weigh the loss of an All-Pro talent or reliable starter the same as a roster long shot placed on IR at the end of the summer and also considers those playing through injuries at less than peak performance.
Using adjusted games lost, the Ravens were not only the healthiest team in the league by a wide margin in 2024, but their 16.3 adjusted games lost were the lowest total by any team since Atlanta in 2017. Baltimore has now enjoyed a decrease in adjusted games lost in three straight seasons after enduring the most in the NFL in the injury-ravaged 2021 campaign.
Only one team — Detroit — finishing in the top nine for most adjusted games lost made the postseason in 2024. Meanwhile, six of the eight teams ranking with the fewest adjusted games lost made the playoffs with Super Bowl champion Philadelphia enjoying the second-best mark in the league. AFC champion Kansas City finished with the 14th-fewest adjusted games lost.
There are exceptions in any given season, of course, but good health remains a critical factor for team success over the long haul. The Ravens repeating that 2024 injury luck won’t be easy.
Below is a look at where the Ravens have finished in adjusted games lost over the years:
2024 — 16.3 (fewest in NFL)
2023 — 71.3 (14th most in NFL)
2022 — 102.6 (eighth most in NFL)
2021 — 191.2 (most in NFL)
2020 — 59.6 (eighth fewest in NFL)
2019 — 68.7 (16th fewest in NFL)
2018 — 29.7 (fewest in NFL)
2017 — 101.6 (sixth most in NFL)
2016 — 62.0 (11th fewest in NFL)
2015 — 96.1 (third most in NFL)
2014 — 52.6 (seventh fewest in NFL)
2013 — 49.8 (ninth fewest in NFL)
2012 — 57.4 (13th fewest in NFL)
2011 — 18.8 (fewest in NFL)
2010 — 50.9 (15th fewest in NFL)
2009 — 28.8 (seventh fewest in NFL)
2008 — 95.0 (third most in NFL)
