When's the last time we had an injury free season?

[engineer24]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the last time OU went an entire season without losing a starter due to injury for the whole season was 2000.

I dont have any stats to back this up, but my gut instinct has a lot more season ending injuries to starters than other top 20 type programs do.

Programs like LSU, Florida, Oregon, Ohio St might lose 1 starter for a couple of games, but I dont recall any of their teams losing multiple starters for the entire season.

Does OU have an injury problem? Not just this year, but something built into the program where our guys get hurt a lot more than other teams?

Or, is the real problem that the other teams backups are better than ours and thus even when those other teams lose starters it doesnt hurt them as much as it does for us?

[lexsooner]

It does seem we suffer more serious injuries than other programs, especially to key players. We lost two of the defensive starters we could not afford to lose and now we lost a key offensive star.

The lack of injuries in 2000 was crucial in winning the national title since I don't recall we had much quality depth on that team. Of course Heupel, our most important player, was indeed seriously hurt toward the end of the season. His elbow was swollen like a melon but he had to play. I recal his effectiveness really went down after the injury, but we won the national title anyhow.

[stoopified]

2000.Funny thing this year is we haven't had a lot of injuries,just critical ones to key players.

[EatLeadCommie]

Josh was injured at the end of 2000. We just kept playing him.

I seem to recall that we were healthy for the USC game. A lot of good that did us on that fateful night...

[jkjsooner]

I think in 2000 not only did we not have a starter go down for the year but no starter missed a start. Seems almost impossible but I remember people saying that.

I remember thinking about how many offensive linemen we lost going back to the Gibbs years. Maybe injuries are just common and every team's fans feel the way we do?

In either case we've definitely had some untimely injuries - White and Murray come to mind.

[OkieThunderLion]

Scott Kempenich missed the Kansas game.

Yeah, I know. I'm weird.