FOXBORO — At a certain point, injuries can cross the barrier from testing a team’s depth to obliterating it.
Last year it was a case of the latter for the Patriots, but to this point, they are in unquestionably better shape as they prepare to host the Houston Texans in a divisional round playoff game on Saturday night.
At this time last year against the Kansas City Chiefs in the same round, the Pats had 14 players on injured reserve. They lost an NFL-high 245 man games to injury, according to ManGamesLost.com. This year, that number was more than cut in half, with the Pats losing 122 man games to injury and just three players on IR.