GREEN BAY — Before hanging up, Charles Woodson had a shout-out he had to deliver to the folks back in Wisconsin.

The former Green Bay Packers defensive leader and current Oakland Raiders safety wanted to make sure everyone knew that Bryan "Flea" Engel, a member of the team's athletic training staff, had been named the NFC assistant athletic trainer of the year .

"There's nobody that's more deserving of that award. Any injury that I got through when I was up there with the Packers, me and 'Flea,' we got through it together," Woodson said during an appearance earlier this week on Green & Gold Today on 540 ESPN and ESPNWisconsin.com . "[I worked] with the other trainers, but I think me and Flea had a special relationship. I'm proud of him, and I just wanted to send him a congratulations."

That Woodson would go out of his way to say that prompted the question: Amid the Packers' seemingly endless injury problems  — over the past two seasons, their starters have missed an NFL-high 153 games, according to the Dallas Morning News' Rick Gosselin — could any of the fault lie with the strength and conditioning staff or the athletic training/medical staff?

"Not in the least bit," replied Woodson, who broke his collarbone twice while in Green Bay but also played through multiple knee and shoulder injuries. "What I know about those guys, what I know about strength and conditioning with Mark Lovat, [the medical staff with] Pepper Burruss, Flea, Dr. McKenzie, Dr. Gray, Kurt (Fielding), Nate (Weir) — they do a first-class job with guys are far as injuries are concerned.

"And I know they are not the cause of injuries. So no, the blame is placed in the wrong place if you want to blame those guys."

Jason Wilde  wrote:

From 2006, the year before Turley arrived on the Farm, as Stanford’s campus is known, through last season, the number of games missed because of injury on the two-deep roster dropped by 87 percent. In 2012, only two Cardinal players required season-ending or postseason surgical repair; this year, only one.

Stanford lost quarterback Andrew Luck, running back Toby Gerhart and Coach Jim Harbaugh to the N.F.L., and yet the Cardinal will make their fourth consecutive Bowl Championship Series appearance Wednesday in the Rose Bowl against Michigan State. The year before Turley arrived, Stanford went 1-11.

For the subtle art of injury prevention, the Cardinals stretch and stretch and stretch. They stretch before and after lifts and before and after practice. They stretch for fun.

Turley pays particular attention to his players’ Functional Movement Screen scores. The F.M.S. is a durability index, what Turley calls “a predictive, quantitative analysis of quality of movement.” That is the first test he conducts. It evaluates seven movements and scores players as balanced, functional, overpowered, dysfunctional and injury prone. It shows if a player executes a movement better with his left leg than his right, pointing out asymmetries.

Asked what N.F.L. scouts should focus on, he says ankle mobility. The ankle begins the chain of movement. Such thinking enabled Stanford to outscore its opponents in the first and fourth quarters by 144 points in 2010, 115 points in 2011 and 102 points in 2012.