New England and Washington were the only teams ranked 20th or worse in AGL to make the playoffs.
Source: FOOTBALL OUTSIDERS: Innovative Statistics, Intelligent Analysis | 2015 Adjusted Games Lost
Football Outsiders always does a good job at quantifying just how impactful injuries are to teams by specifically looking each player who was lost and what their true impact was.
Not surprisingly the Pats come in at 29th overall with only Ravens, Redskins and Giants being hit harder by injuries in 2015. The Pats were 12th overall in 2014.
Nate Solder has to be the most impactful injury of the year because of the trickle-down effect it had on the rest of the line. They just didn’t have another tackle athletic enough to fill in for him and were left with the up-and-down performances of Sebastian Vollmer, Marcus Cannon, Cameron Fleming and even a tackle cameo by Bryan Stork.
Dion Lewis was the biggest buzzkill injury of the year after coming out of nowhere to look like Barry Sanders in the first seven games of the season. It’s hard to fathom just what the Patriots would’ve looked like at the end of the season if Lewis was still in the mix even with the problems at tackle. Of course then losing LeGarrette Blount on top of Lewis only decimated the running back position even more and essentially made the Pats a pass-only team in the playoffs–never a good combination for a Super Bowl run.
Losing Julian Edelman for the last seven games of the regular season was certainly a big blow as well. He returned and was effective in the playoffs but would’ve still been a lot more dangerous without the plate in his foot.
Still, despite all these injuries the Pats still came within a missed field goal/failed two point conversion of taking the Super Bowl champs to overtime on their homefield. That’s a testament to just how tough Bill Belichick’s teams always seem to be.