Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 May 1;31(3):289-294.
doi: 10.1097/JSM.0000000000000741.

Five-Year Trends in Reported National Football League Injuries

Gillian Bedard  1 , David Wyndham Lawrence  1   2
Affiliations

Five-Year Trends in Reported National Football League Injuries

Gillian Bedard et al. Clin J Sport Med. .

Abstract

Objective: To determine the incidence of all-cause injury and concussion in the National Football League (NFL) over a 5-season time span (2012-2016).

Design: Prospective descriptive epidemiological study.

Setting: National Football League Injury Report data from 2012 to 2016.

Participants: National Football League players.

Interventions: None (descriptive study).

Main outcome measures: Injury report data were collected prospectively for all NFL injuries from 5 seasons (2012-2016). The incidences of reported concussions, knee injuries, and all-cause injury were compared across the 5 seasons using the Kruskal-Wallis rank-sum test.

Results: A total of 10 927 injuries were identified across the 5 seasons, including 752 (6.9%) concussions. The top 3 most injured areas included the knee (17.2%), ankle (13.6%), and shoulder (8.8%). Defensive backs consistently had the highest number of all-cause injuries per season. When comparing across years, there was a significant decrease in all-cause injury in 2016 compared with 2015, a significant decrease in knee injuries in 2016 compared with 2015, and a significant increase in concussion in 2015 compared with 2014 (P < 0.05).

Conclusions: Reported all-cause injury incidence and knee injury incidence is currently on the decline. However, reported concussion incidence has recently increased, perhaps due to increased awareness and rule changes implemented to aid in the detection and treatment of concussion. Strategies to reduce injury and improve injury awareness should continue to be explored.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

References

    1. Kerr ZY, Lynall RC, Mauntel TC, et al. High school football injury rates and services by athletic trainer employment status. J Athl Train. 2016;51:70–73.
    1. Powell JW, Dompier TP. Analysis of injury rates and treatment patterns for time-loss and non-time-loss injuries among collegiate student-athletes. J Athl Train. 2004;39:56–70.
    1. Lawrence DW, Hutchison MG, Comper P. Descriptive epidemiology of musculoskeletal injuries and concussions in the National Football League, 2012-2014. Orthop J Sports Med. 2015;3:2325967115583653.
    1. Mullally WJ. Concussion. Am J Med. 2017;130:885–892.
    1. Castellani RJ. Chronic traumatic encephalopathy: a paradigm in search of evidence? Lab Invest. 2015;95:576–584.