Cam Akers Official Thread

[Cameron Giles]

@ Cameron Giles

Like my first sentence stated....The reality is there is a very good chance Akers returns just fine. Surgery techniques are much better then even a few years ago and rehab is as well.

Further down.....No doubt there is risk but it isn't like it once was in the recent past.

So the very words "Good Chance" and "No Doubt there is Risk"

Should give any reader an indication that I am not dismissing anything.

I will say studies from a years ago will most likely be different than today given surgical improvements. After all at one point the consensus was the earth was flat.

I did not disagree with that statistical study but it is dated which was the point.

No clue how, when, or if he comes back better than ever but the odds are good he will IMO.

I should clarify that my stance isn't that Akers will never play again or something; it's that it's fair to anticipate that he will lose value as a football player, since many players who suffered the injury have. Otherwise, this wouldn't be a feared injury.

We are using low sample sizes to discuss Achilles injuries regardless because it's a low volume injury. That's the point. It's not perfect, but it's not impractical to use to help you build opinions.

[Ice]

@ Cameron Giles

Like my first sentence stated....The reality is there is a very good chance Akers returns just fine. Surgery techniques are much better then even a few years ago and rehab is as well.

Further down.....No doubt there is risk but it isn't like it once was in the recent past.

So the very words "Good Chance" and "No Doubt there is Risk"

Should give any reader an indication that I am not dismissing anything.

I will say studies from a years ago will most likely be different than today given surgical improvements. After all at one point the consensus was the earth was flat.

I did not disagree with that statistical study but it is dated which was the point.

No clue how, when, or if he comes back better than ever but the odds are good he will IMO.

I should clarify that my stance isn't that Akers will never play again or something; it's that it's fair to anticipate that he will lose value as a football player, since many players who suffered the injury have. Otherwise, this wouldn't be a feared injury.

We are using low sample sizes to discuss Achilles injuries regardless because it's a low volume injury. That's the point. It's not perfect, but it's not impractical to use to help you build opinions.

I agree with you that he will lose value at least in the short term and perhaps forever. My take is he has a much better chance than he would have 7 years ago due to advancements in techniques to make a full recovery but there are no guarantees.

[Sriracha]

Agreed; Conversely, if someone were to plant a flag and say that Akers will not return from the Achilles injury as a franchise RB they'd also be going out on a limb or coming to premature conclusions based on insufficient data.

There will never be sufficient data. They would at least be presenting an opinion with some form of practical data.

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

[Ruggenater]

Agreed; Conversely, if someone were to plant a flag and say that Akers will not return from the Achilles injury as a franchise RB they'd also be going out on a limb or coming to premature conclusions based on insufficient data.

There will never be sufficient data. They would at least be presenting an opinion with some form of practical data.

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

Pretty much everything NFL/fantasy-related is small samples. We only have (had) 16 game seasons, which is a tiny sample size. There’s a reason analytics were developed earlier and are further along in baseball.

Say you assume the “real” chances of coming back and being effective after an Achilles injury is 50/50. Then your expectation for 11 cases is 5.5 successfully returning, and 5.5 failing to. The standard deviation assuming normal distribution and 11 trials is 1.66, putting 11 failures in 11 trials more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, which, despite small sample size, is fairly compelling evidence that it’s not 50/50. Simplified example/way of looking at this, yes, but there’s nothing to point to that shows betting on Akers to be a good bet.

[Shoreline Steamers]

It's just hope on one side that Akers will return to form. Then arguing against anyone who tries to use past examples as a reason why he won't by claiming said past examples aren't meaningful, or "large" enough to be predictive. Or the examples are of lesser athletes. Or, medical advancements will make it so.

The Akers will never be the same side is using examples of past players who've failed to return to form, using those examples as the basis for their argument.

There's no definitive answer either way, and we'll only know by following Akers recovery. This really isn't a debate that can be won by either side. Cam Akers performance once he returns to the field is the only meaningful metric we'll be able to use in evaluating him. And that's not happening until 2022.

[FantasyFreak]

I should clarify that my stance isn't that Akers will never play again or something; it's that it's fair to anticipate that he will lose value as a football player, since many players who suffered the injury have. Otherwise, this wouldn't be a feared injury.

I don't think anybody is thinking this, to be honest. He's going to be on their roster, almost certainly, next year. I think a lot of people are just seeing the ceiling and floor of Akers being a lot, and I mean a lot lower. Even those who were high on him. I don't think anybody was higher on Akers than Jason Moore of the FantasyFootballers, and he had this to say after the injury.

Screen Shot 2021-07-29 at 4.08.03 PM.png (121.69 KiB) Viewed 626 times

I think this is where a lot of people stand, myself included. I won't be trading for Akers unless it's super cheap, like late 2nd in a Superflex type cheap. I am not willing to bet on him at this point, in any meaningful way. He was an unknown, as it was. Didn't really know how he'd handle an increased workload, and suffered 2 injuries in season last year, and now this. There's little hope for him being in the situation he found himself this off season, ever again, and a ton of his value was tied to his situation and opportunity this year. Akers definitely will still be in the league for a few years, IMO. Just not as a difference making FF player the way he was anticipated to be.

I think Foreman is honestly the closest comp we have, being a recent achilles tear (2017) being a day 2 pick, getting hurt at a similar age, and having a similar speed score to Akers, but unfortunately he was only beginning to get touches when he hurt himself. Foreman also had a lousy attitude, I think, in the following years, so that certainly wouldn't have helped his cause to get back on the field.

I think if people can get close to the original rookie pick value, that's a good "out" point, but I think it will be hard for a lot of people to do, because only a few short weeks ago Akers was a first round startup player in 1 QB leagues, and losing that value is a tough thing to accept. As someone who traded for Luck and AB on the same team (SF) the off season Luck retired and AB went nuts, I understand how it can be hard. I only recently dropped Luck from that team.

[OhCruelestRanter]

There will never be sufficient data. They would at least be presenting an opinion with some form of practical data.

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

Pretty much everything NFL/fantasy-related is small samples. We only have (had) 16 game seasons, which is a tiny sample size. There’s a reason analytics were developed earlier and are further along in baseball.

Say you assume the “real” chances of coming back and being effective after an Achilles injury is 50/50. Then your expectation for 11 cases is 5.5 successfully returning, and 5.5 failing to. The standard deviation assuming normal distribution and 11 trials is 1.66, putting 11 failures in 11 trials more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, which, despite small sample size, is fairly compelling evidence that it’s not 50/50. Simplified example/way of looking at this, yes, but there’s nothing to point to that shows betting on Akers to be a good bet.

The problem isn’t that the sample size is 11. If we only had 11 injuries, then that’s what we’d be stuck with. But it isn’t.

The problem is that you’re arbitrarily deciding that the sample size is 11, because you’ve arbitrarily decided that there’s something different about RBs where we should exclude all other NFL players and athletes when predicting Akers’ steps forward.

Unless you have a medical/physiologic reason to explain why Arian Foster’s outcome is generalize-able to Akers but Demaryius Thomas’ isn’t, then you shouldn’t be excluding one of them from the data.

[FantasyFreak]

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

Pretty much everything NFL/fantasy-related is small samples. We only have (had) 16 game seasons, which is a tiny sample size. There’s a reason analytics were developed earlier and are further along in baseball.

Say you assume the “real” chances of coming back and being effective after an Achilles injury is 50/50. Then your expectation for 11 cases is 5.5 successfully returning, and 5.5 failing to. The standard deviation assuming normal distribution and 11 trials is 1.66, putting 11 failures in 11 trials more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, which, despite small sample size, is fairly compelling evidence that it’s not 50/50. Simplified example/way of looking at this, yes, but there’s nothing to point to that shows betting on Akers to be a good bet.

The problem isn’t that the sample size is 11. If we only had 11 injuries, then that’s what we’d be stuck with. But it isn’t.

The problem is that you’re arbitrarily deciding that the sample size is 11, because you’ve arbitrarily decided that there’s something different about RBs where we should exclude all other NFL players and athletes when predicting Akers’ steps forward.

Unless you have a medical/physiologic reason to explain why Arian Foster’s outcome is generalize-able to Akers but Demaryius Thomas’ isn’t, then you shouldn’t be excluding one of them from the data.

I agree with what you are saying, in part. Here is an example of a more advanced study across all positions. The return rate is fairly high. They do however, also note that "running backs and Linebackers have significantly postoperative performance vs. controls." It does not however, seem to inhibit games played post op across any position, including RB.

https://www.healio.com/news/orthopedics ... don-repair

[SoftwoodGrampian]

Agreed; Conversely, if someone were to plant a flag and say that Akers will not return from the Achilles injury as a franchise RB they'd also be going out on a limb or coming to premature conclusions based on insufficient data.

There will never be sufficient data. They would at least be presenting an opinion with some form of practical data.

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.



Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

This is good^

[FantasyFreak]

It's just hope on one side that Akers will return to form. Then arguing against anyone who tries to use past examples as a reason why he won't by claiming said past examples aren't meaningful, or "large" enough to be predictive. Or the examples are of lesser athletes. Or, medical advancements will make it so.

The Akers will never be the same side is using examples of past players who've failed to return to form, using those examples as the basis for their argument.

There's no definitive answer either way, and we'll only know by following Akers recovery. This really isn't a debate that can be won by either side. Cam Akers performance once he returns to the field is the only meaningful metric we'll be able to use in evaluating him. And that's not happening until 2022.

Pretty much. I was trying to acquire him most of the off season, until the price went into orbit. Now, I have no desire at all. It will be interesting to see. I honestly hope he does come back. I don't like to see players lose out to injury, but it's unfortunately common in this sport, due to the nature of it. I love the RB position, and like to see lots of talented backs in the league. I hope Akers comes back, but in terms of how I approach my Dynasty teams, I'm not betting on it. It's not just the injury, it's the window of opportunity he's lost, and the lack of development (spending the next year rehabbing instead of getting better at his position) tacked on the Akers that's now working against him. I am not willing to bet the Rams don't address the position, next off season, with Akers still being an enigma.

[Sriracha]

There will never be sufficient data. They would at least be presenting an opinion with some form of practical data.

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

Pretty much everything NFL/fantasy-related is small samples. We only have (had) 16 game seasons, which is a tiny sample size. There’s a reason analytics were developed earlier and are further along in baseball.

Say you assume the “real” chances of coming back and being effective after an Achilles injury is 50/50. Then your expectation for 11 cases is 5.5 successfully returning, and 5.5 failing to. The standard deviation assuming normal distribution and 11 trials is 1.66, putting 11 failures in 11 trials more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, which, despite small sample size, is fairly compelling evidence that it’s not 50/50. Simplified example/way of looking at this, yes, but there’s nothing to point to that shows betting on Akers to be a good bet.

Akers circumstance is not identical (or even similar) to all 11 of those players— most of which I’d venture to say had far worse than a 50/50 chance to bounce back in the NFL with or without the Achilles injury.

[FantasyFreak]

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

Pretty much everything NFL/fantasy-related is small samples. We only have (had) 16 game seasons, which is a tiny sample size. There’s a reason analytics were developed earlier and are further along in baseball.

Say you assume the “real” chances of coming back and being effective after an Achilles injury is 50/50. Then your expectation for 11 cases is 5.5 successfully returning, and 5.5 failing to. The standard deviation assuming normal distribution and 11 trials is 1.66, putting 11 failures in 11 trials more than 3 standard deviations from the mean, which, despite small sample size, is fairly compelling evidence that it’s not 50/50. Simplified example/way of looking at this, yes, but there’s nothing to point to that shows betting on Akers to be a good bet.

Akers circumstance is not identical (or even similar) to all 11 of those players— most of which I’d venture to say had far worse than a 50/50 chance to bounce back in the NFL with or without the Achilles injury.

No 2 circumstances are identical, and I think the most similar one we can pin is Foreman. Day 2 pick, similar speed score, huge college production, tore his achilles at a similar age, and only a few years ago, so surgical procedures are relevant. However his outcome doesn't determine Akers outcome. I think there potential outcomes are interesting. I think Akers has a shot to be the first RB to be a relevant player after an achilles, beyond a year or two. Being a better prospect than most who have suffered the injury, combined with better medical treatment than those came before, I think he has a good shot at getting a 2nd contract in the NFL (and I sincerely hope he does). Being a lead back for multiple years in an NFL offense, and being a FF producer that people are trading multiple firsts for? I think the chances on that are slim to none.

[Cameron Giles]

Agreed; Conversely, if someone were to plant a flag and say that Akers will not return from the Achilles injury as a franchise RB they'd also be going out on a limb or coming to premature conclusions based on insufficient data.

There will never be sufficient data. They would at least be presenting an opinion with some form of practical data.

If there isn't sufficient data; there isn't sufficient data. The chance that 11 players failed due to random chance is way too high with a sample size of 11 players to confidently claim this data is meaningful.

Trying to establish causal narratives to explain results is a very human thing to do; but this line of reasoning is very susceptible to logical fallacies -- such as the "small sample trap" we have here.

This doesn't mean that there isn't anything relevant to take away from the players who've torn their Achilles. Because at one point, for each of the players in the NFL who suffered the injury, they were getting the best procedure and treatment available at the time, and those things were not subpar. These players always get access to the best treatment. There's a major league baseball player who tore his Achilles a year ago and just tore the same tendon this year.

So, it's not as simple as saying "the treatment is better today" = disregard everything before it. It's still a feared injury for a reason.

All I'm saying is that you can absolutely take relevant information away from these studies, even if it's not undisputed proof of an outcome for any specific individual who tears it in the future.

[Pullo Vision]

I think this is where a lot of people stand, myself included. I won't be trading for Akers unless it's super cheap, like late 2nd in a Superflex type cheap. I am not willing to bet on him at this point, in any meaningful way. He was an unknown, as it was. Didn't really know how he'd handle an increased workload, and suffered 2 injuries in season last year, and now this. There's little hope for him being in the situation he found himself this off season, ever again, and a ton of his value was tied to his situation and opportunity this year. Akers definitely will still be in the league for a few years, IMO. Just not as a difference making FF player the way he was anticipated to be.

I think Foreman is honestly the closest comp we have, being a recent achilles tear (2017) being a day 2 pick, getting hurt at a similar age, and having a similar speed score to Akers, but unfortunately he was only beginning to get touches when he hurt himself. Foreman also had a lousy attitude, I think, in the following years, so that certainly wouldn't have helped his cause to get back on the field.

On the underlined- his value, to me, was/is his athletic ability and limited positional knowledge. Train him up, get him a good oline and scheme and watch him go- that was the upside/dream.

Even when injured, he can work on his mental skills for the position. If he ups his game and still has the inside track at volume due to draft capital, he can still be productive with volume. The odds are reduced if his athletic skills are significantly diminished.

The fact a player with his athletic ability landed on a potent offense with an at least decent oline is what combine long term potential (after he refined his game) with short term opportunity for volume.

[FantasyFreak]

I think this is where a lot of people stand, myself included. I won't be trading for Akers unless it's super cheap, like late 2nd in a Superflex type cheap. I am not willing to bet on him at this point, in any meaningful way. He was an unknown, as it was. Didn't really know how he'd handle an increased workload, and suffered 2 injuries in season last year, and now this. There's little hope for him being in the situation he found himself this off season, ever again, and a ton of his value was tied to his situation and opportunity this year. Akers definitely will still be in the league for a few years, IMO. Just not as a difference making FF player the way he was anticipated to be.

I think Foreman is honestly the closest comp we have, being a recent achilles tear (2017) being a day 2 pick, getting hurt at a similar age, and having a similar speed score to Akers, but unfortunately he was only beginning to get touches when he hurt himself. Foreman also had a lousy attitude, I think, in the following years, so that certainly wouldn't have helped his cause to get back on the field.

On the underlined- his value, to me, was/is his athletic ability and limited positional knowledge. Train him up, get him a good oline and scheme and watch him go- that was the upside/dream.

Even when injured, he can work on his mental skills for the position. If he ups his game and still has the inside track at volume due to draft capital, he can still be productive with volume. The odds are reduced if his athletic skills are significantly diminished.

The fact a player with his athletic ability landed on a potent offense with an at least decent oline is what combine long term potential (after he refined his game) with short term opportunity for volume.

Except watching tape isn't going to improve his game all that much. Reps and practice/games were what he needed. He's lost that ability this year, and that absolutely hurts his development. It's going to be really difficult for him to up his game next year, without practicing/playing, and of course, having the inside track to volume coming off that injury is far from likely. The Rams O line is aging, and I am really not sure beyond this year what it will look like, it's definitely a concern for them moving forward beyond 2021. The Rams will almost certainly address the RB position next year, too. March/April is a time they will almost certainly add talent to their backfield, I just don't think it's realistic that they won't, with so much uncertainty around Akers.

In terms of draft capital, that won't really guarantee him anything. Henderson was only about 15 picks further back, and they had no problems adding talent to the backfield. The reasons Akers value went into orbit, for the most part was that he was supposedly going to be the bell cow in a potent offense, and then in turn, that would lead to him securing a bell cow role beyond this year as well. Now that's all out the window. I would trade for Akers, if someone were selling cheap, but as I said earlier, his dynasty value has cratered, and should be less than his original rookie pick value at this point. I don't think anybody is paying that early first, but I think some are paying late firsts. Personally, that's too much for me still. He's too much risk for me now. However I know some are still willing to take a shot at that price, and I don't blame them for it, it's just not something I am doing.