Imagine you have worked your whole life to make it to the NFL. You have trained night and day for years just to get a shot to prove yourself. You finally are given a chance to show your worth, and you get sidelined by an injury. This is the reality for all too many NFL players this season. It seems as if every week more players are going down due to injuries; whether it be a concussion, achilles sprain, or an ACL tear, injuries are a constant in the NFL. The extent of injuries this NFL season is unheard of.
The injuries don’t just affect the play on the field, they can also affect fan engagement and the success of a franchise. If a team invests 300 million dollars into their star player and then they get hurt, they are screwed. They are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on a player that won’t touch the field. Star players have been going down left and right, leaving their position and responsibility to the next man up.
Some of the most impactful stars in the league have suffered injuries this year, including the San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffery and Los Angeles Rams star wideout Puka Nacua. There’s almost an endless list of players that have suffered injuries causing them to miss many games this season. These teams came into the year with hopes of reaching the Super Bowl but these setbacks made it very difficult to attain this goal.
The NFL has attempted to take steps to limit these injuries. They have banned specific tackles that they deem dangerous, such as helmet to helmet hits, while also allowing players to wear padding over their helmets, called Guardian Caps, to help prevent concussions. Despite these actions, injuries continue to play an extremely dominant role in the sport. The NFL continues to establish new kickoff rules in an effort to reduce injury rates. In the face of all this effort, the issue continues to get worse. Unfortunately, another alarming issue comes to mind: We aren’t even close to finishing the season! Every team has succumbed to this relentless plague, with teams’ playoff hopes being hijacked after every injury. It may be temporary in the short term, but players continue to experience this pain after their careers. Although the league consists of numerous star players, it seems as though it is becoming a sport of the backups and the role players. With players dropping like flies, the Super Bowl champion may come down to which team has the most depth.
What can the NFL do to stop such an outrageous amount of injuries? There’s endless solutions, such as banning dangerous tackles, increasing helmet padding and safety, making sure players are not at extreme risk before they go out and play, to name a few. All this is just previous action, but it has had little to zero effect on injury rates. The league has gone to drastic measures that have almost gone unnoticed to people due to the continuation of mass injury. One solution that hasn’t been implemented yet may be to alter the playing surface. Mark Cote from Mass General Brigham states “It found that, had every game been played on a grass surface, at least 300 fewer foot and leg injuries would have been expected.” Maybe this is the solution we have all been waiting for. Maybe the grim reaper this whole time has been the playing surface, like MetLife Stadium in New York City. Hopefully teams can realize this fact and convert their playing surfaces to grass to reduce injuries.
The fact is that all these new rules may cause a slight reduction in injuries, which by no means is bad. Despite these facts, these new rules also severely limit the extent of how hard players can push themselves and what they can achieve on the field. Games have been decided on game winning kicks, game winning touchdowns, yet now we are now seeing numerous game winning flags. Some player makes a great play, nope, erase it for that illegal tackle. Regardless, injuries and penalties are going to stage an important role in the league, but I feel that there must be a way for players to play hard school football and not get injured every play. Maybe the league can find a way to balance the two, because if this trend continues, the National Football League might just become the No Fun League.
