The NFL’s Injuries Just Keep Piling Up
The League That Breaks Men: The NFL’s Injuries Just Keep Piling Up
Source: Kevin Sabitus / Getty
As we head into the 2025-26 NFL season, the preseason has come to an end, which means that coaches across the league can breathe a sigh of relief–if they made it through the series of games mostly overlooked as tune-up games–without injuries.
But for some teams, the dangers of the sport–no matter how big the helmet or how much they want players not to go full speed–can not be avoided, because football is dangerous and injuries, oftentimes career-altering, are a part of the game. Injuries aren’t just coincidental, they are baked into the recipe and the NFL knows it, they just don’t know what to do about it and honestly don’t care. The money is too good.
Today, Thursday, Sept. 4, the NFL will officially start the 106th season, which means that for 106 years the largest football league in the world has been catering to an audience whose lifeblood is the violence that football creates. Just the blocking and tackling are comparable to a car crash.
“Football players were struck in the head 30 to 50 times per game and regularly endured blows similar to those experienced in car crashes, according to a Virginia Tech study that fitted players’ helmets with the same kinds of sensors that trigger auto air bags,” CBS News reports.
The significant research surrounding CTE, life altering concussions, torn ACLs, fractured bones, dislocated joints, and spinal cord injuries are regular occurrences. Empirical data shows the alarming rates with which injuries have become just another part of the game. But what tends to be ignored is how frequently these sometimes life changing experiences can be, often sidelining athletes for months — and in some cases, ending careers or altering lives permanently.
In the first week of the preseason, the Detroit Lions played the Atlanta Falcons and safety Morice Norris’ head snapped back so bad that the game was suspended and Norris was taken off the field in an ambulance. Los Angeles Rams offensive tackle Rashawn Slater was carted off the practice field after reportedly tearing his patellar tendon, a possible season ending injury. Baltimore Ravens rookie cornerback Bilhal Kone suffered severe ligament damage, a career threatening injury.
And that was just the first week. By the end of preseason there were three players who suffered achilles tendon ruptures, 6 ACL tears, 17 hamstring strains, 6 calf strains and 7 lower back injuries, all of which have the potential to lead to season ending complications.
In 2024, the NFL had 44 concussions in the preseason (the last year these numbers were reported) and this was the fewest number of head traumas since they began tracking these numbers in 2015. That was a 24% drop from 2023 and was far less than the 91 they had in 2017.
What’s rarely mentioned is the mental health of players who have for years been told to play through pain.
A survey done by ESPN/KFF Survey of NFL Players from 1988 found that “almost every respondent — 96% — reported having pain in the past three months. Half reported they experience pain every day, compared to 23% of men their age. In many cases, chronic pain limits the players’ work or social lives. They also reported rates of cognitive decline three times higher than that of men their age, with 55% saying they had confusion or memory loss that’s happening more often or getting worse.”
Most of the 546 former players talked about severe memory loss or significant memory loss for someone their age. “And half of players reported feeling depressed in the past 12 months, compared to a quarter of men their age,” the survey found.
One of the more severe mental health issues was discovered in 2018 after former Buffalo Bills lineman Richie Incognito went to a Scottsdale, Arizona funeral home looking to cut off his deceased father’s head.
“Incognito was detained and arrested at a Scottsdale, Arizona funeral home, where his father’s funeral was being held earlier this week,” CBS Sports reports. “At various points of his time at the funeral home, he threatened to return to his car, get guns out of the car and shoot employees of the funeral home if they didn’t allow him access to the proceedings and his father’s body.”
Incognito was arrested and guns were found in his car. He would be charged with disorderly conduct and making threats. But get this, despite the obvious mental health crisis at the funeral home, Incognito would return to football playing this time for the Las Vegas Raiders the very next year. He would retire from football in 2022.
When the NFL does the surveys and invests in studies surrounding the health of NFL players it’s because they don’t want to lose out on all of the money they make if players one day decided that the game is too risky and just stop playing the sport. And, make no mistake about it, the NFL is a money making machine as they generate around $13 billion in profit a year, so the idea that player safety would ever stop the league is a myth. But I fear that we are nearing eerily close to watching a player die on the field.
During “Monday Night Football” in 2023, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin almost died after being hit in the chest by Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Tee Higgins. Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest on the field and was stabilized after medics performed CPR. Hamlin was transferred to a local hospital where he recovered and it was learned that he suffered from a condition called commotio cordis. Hamlin would come back to the team and earn his starting spot in 2024.
But something’s got to give. Either the NFL will have to dilute their offerings to something a step above flag football, or we are going to continue to watch the debilitation and/or zombification of modern day gladiators and both outcomes feel sad, but there is one I can live with.
