FOXBORO — Milton Williams labored through the locker room Wednesday afternoon.
He wore a backpack, street clothes and a boot around his left foot and ankle. Reportedly, Williams has a high ankle sprain, and reports seem to check out, considering the Patriots wasted little time placing him on injured reserve instead of hoping he might return in one month for a big game at Baltimore.
Never mind that, Milton. See you after four games and five weeks. Rest easy.
As his teammates filed out of the locker room to go to practice, Williams headed for the same door and turned the other way.
It was like a blue moon sighting indoors.
After 11 games and almost 11 months, Williams is the first Patriots’ starter to go on injured reserve under Mike Vrabel. Virtually no team in the NFL has been healthier than the Pats. It’s as if players have been lacing up with four-leaf clovers in their cleats.
So if you want an explanation for the Patriots’ stunning 9-2 start, after mentioning Vrabel, Drake Maye and the Charmin soft schedule, there it is.
The Pats are not just among the healthiest teams top to bottom. They’re especially healthy at the top; a non-negotiable ingredient for cooking up a surprise playoff team, let alone a sprint to the No. 1 seed. Teams with middling to good talent must wring every ounce out of their abilities to beat great teams.
You can’t do that from the trainers room.
Sure, the Pats have been dinged up here and there. Christian Gonzalez missed the first three games, Rhamondre Stevenson just missed three with a bad toe and Kayshon Boutte sat out a couple to nurse a hurt hamstring. But that’s life in the NFL. And how many other significant Patriots injuries can you name?
All due respect to the hobbled Antonio Gibson, the answer is zero.
For that, the Pats can, of course, thank Lady Luck, and perhaps a fresh face in their building: Frank Piraino.
Piraino is in his first season as the Patriots’ director of sports performance. He first served under Vrabel in Tennessee and has a strength coach’s background. He works closely with strength and conditioning coaches Deron Mayo and Brian McDonough, and their department often collaborates with the athletic trainers to set players’ recovery, treatment and injury prevention plans.
More than any other season in the modern era, the Patriots’ plans involve a simple, underrated idea: rest.
New England Patriots' Milton Williams (97) and Christian Barmore celebrate during an NFL game against the Cleveland Browns at Gillette Stadium on Oct. 26 in Foxboro. (Winslow Townson/AP Images for Panini)
New England Patriots' Milton Williams (97) and Christian Barmore celebrate during an NFL game against the Cleveland Browns at Gillette Stadium on Oct. 26 in Foxboro. (Winslow Townson/AP Images for Panini)
During training camp, the Pats sidelined select veterans for stretches of several practices. One such veteran, 34-year-old right tackle Morgan Moses, was limited at Wednesday’s practice for a day of veteran rest. More than that, Vrabel has already shortened entire practices for the sake of the entire team and mentioned the need to lighten the workloads of older players, like Stefon Diggs, Harold Landry and Hunter Henry, as the year progresses.
There’s a close to 100% chance the Pats, like most NFL teams, are incorporating some form of sports science; measuring players’ sleep, hydration and physical exertion to inform their decision-making. In Bill Belichick’s final years, well after Belichick poached the Celtics’ lead sports scientist, Johann Bilsborough, and made him the team’s director of performance and rehabilitation, the Pats tracked how many yards players ran in practice. Though some felt Belichick ignored Bilsborough’s data when scripting practice.
“I don’t think they used (the data) that much, to be quite honest,” a team source told me in 2023. “Guys would run a lot of yards, and it would show maybe they should slow down. And then they’d have to do the same thing the next day.”
Well, not anymore. Whether or not ample rest and recovery continue to protect the Patriots, Williams’ injury highlighted the danger the front office invited when it stood pat at the trade deadline. The Pats lack depth among their pass rushers and pass-protectors, and even with Williams, the Patriots’ pass rush has been downright average.
Through Week 11, that pass rush ranks 16th per Pro Football Focus grades, 21st in sack percentage and between 16th and 25th in pressure rate depending on your football database of choice. ESPN’s pass-rush win rate metric also frowns on the Pats, slotting them 24th in the league.
Now, it’s impossible to distinguish how much the Patriots’ new approach to injury prevention has helped their pass rush stay afloat, and their roster stay on its feet (Vrabel’s Titans teams were often the most injured in the league, especially his last two). However, there is no denying how fundamental good health has been to their equally stunning and stellar start.
Spotrac, the self-proclaimed largest online sports team and player contract resource on the internet, provides a real-time look at the injured cash totals for each NFL team. Meaning, at any point in the season, you can learn how much guaranteed money teams have lost because players got hurt. Given players’ values often correlate with their contracts, this metric — while crude — provides some measure of contextualized insight that raw totals, like games lost or starters injured, do not.
So far, the league leaders in injured cash are no surprise. The Bengals rank No. 1, having lost star quarterback Joe Burrow for two-plus months. Then there’s Arizona, which is down Kyler Murray and a few top draft picks. Further down in the top 10 are Washington (no Jayden Daniels), the banged-up Lions and Dallas.
Meanwhile, all the way at the bottom, the Patriots rank third-to-last in cash lost to injury, despite leading the NFL in guaranteed money spent during this past offseason. The only teams ahead of them are currently playoff-bound: the Rams, who might be the best team in football, and the Jaguars.
Zooming out, here’s the rest of the bottom eight in cash lost to injury: the Seahawks, Chiefs, Buccaneers, Packers and Eagles. So of the eight healthiest teams in the NFL, seven are playoff teams and the other, Kansas City, is fighting to prolong a modern dynasty.
Coincidence?
C’mon.