Injuries are an inevitable part of playing sports. When it comes to football, this is especially true. Every year, NFL players incur a variety of injuries due to practicing or playing which can leave them sidelined for weeks at a time. Their teams must then work to fill their spot or make due without them.
However, injuries still happen and happen to both stars and roleplayers alike. We’ve seen superstar players such as Aaron Rodgers miss significant time on the field. We’ve even seen players in their prime retire, like Andrew Luck, due to a cycle of injury and rehab.
Recently, players, fans, teams, and the league have strived to increase player safety, whether by changes to the rules or to a change in mindset, such as not playing through a concussion or other serious injury.
What we found is that the Seattle Seahawks have had the most injuries over the last five seasons with 1,569 players ruled out. Second are the Patriots with 1,550, followed by the Colts (1,437), Ravens (1,314), and Jaguars (1,255). The Atlanta Falcons are the least injured team at a count of just 619.
One of the first things we looked at was the count of injuries by team. We wanted to find out which team had the most injuries by year. The above table includes the numbers for players who were ruled out for a game due to injury.
In recent years, fans and news pundits have made comments on the seemingly increased amount of injuries in the NFL. We wanted to help answer that question so we compiled the two above datasets on injuries and injured reserve by year. What we found is that there is indeed an upward trend.
Also seeHow many NFL Players get Concussions a year