Fantasy Football Injury Updates: Cooper Kupp, George Kittle, De’Von Achane

1 week away from kick-off, but the injuries are already flowing. Here are the updates you’ve been asking for.

As always, if you aren’t finding what you’re looking for, hit us up on Twitter/X @SportMDAnalysis and @FantasyPros, and check out sportsmedanalytics.com for the rest.

Here we go.

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NFL Injury Updates

Cooper Kupp (WR – LAR)

Hamstring re-aggravations for WRs over 30 are obviously not great news. The initial injury took ~3.5 pre-season weeks to return, which pretty convincingly indicates a low-grade strain. The re-aggravations tend to be worse, but we can gain two pieces of insight from Sean McVay’s post-practice comments. First, they’re calling him day-to-day, which tells us this is probably relatively low severity. Grade 2+ hamstring strains are almost always called week-to-week right away. Second, McVay commented on needing him to be ready to return to performance rather than just to play. That suggests that they are willing to have him miss time if needed to get Kupp back for good.

The average timeline for mild hamstring re-aggravations takes about 2.5 weeks. The real problem is the re-injury rate – for a WR over 30 years old who has already injured his hamstring in the pre-season, re-injuries occur 20-25% of the time, and that rate is going to be slightly higher the faster he returns. Combining the context with the data, we’d lean towards Kupp missing Week 1 and returning Week 2. There is a real possibility that they slow-play this to lower the re-injury risk, but it would be surprising, based on the injury severity, to see him return later than Week 3 or 4. Expect a relatively low production impact by the time Week 3 rolls around.

George Kittle (TE – SF)

This is another case of a player who returned from a muscle strain only to re-aggravate the injury. Kittle’s situation is made even riskier by the fact that he has a history of groin strains, causing missed time in the past. While the data does slightly favor him being ready to play Week 1, he’s going to carry a 20% elevated injury risk for the first half of the season compared to other TEs.

De’Von Achane (RB – MIA)

The video of his injury mechanism suggested an AC joint sprain. During the season, these average 2-3 for most RBs. Given his injury timing, we would expect to see him in practice next week and playing Week 1 against the Chargers. RBs typically don’t see major performance hits from this injury, and re-aggravation risk is only mild (~5-10%).

And that’s all for today. If there’s anyone we missed, check sportsmedanalytics.com or hit us with a question on Twitter/X @SportMDAnalysis and @FantasyPros, and we’ll be happy to get you the answers you need. Happy drafting!