NFL concussions plummet during preseason, rise in regular season


52% fewer concussions among players mandated to wear padded helmet covers early on in training camp

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Although concussion incidence plummeted in the NFL this past preseason, the number of brain injuries diagnosed rose 18% during the regular season, year-over-year.

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Those were the top injury-data takeaways revealed Friday by league health-and-safety executives, on a conference call with reporters.

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Both the number of, and per-game rate of, concussions suffered in regular-season games in 2022 rose for the first time since 2019 — specifically, in number from 126 in 2021 to 149, and in per-game rate from 0.23 to 0.27.

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The per-game rate is far more meaningful, when comparing annual regular-season numbers since 2015, when the league began tracking detailed concussion data. That’s because in 2021 the number of regular-season games for each team rose annually from 16 to 17, or league-wide from a total of 255 games to 272 (a 6.3% rise).

The 0.27 per-game concussion incidence in 2022 tied for the highest in the league since 2018, when NFL leaders stepped up interventions by annually introducing targeted equipment enhancements and rules changes, meant specifically to lower the incidence of brain injuries, to make the game safer.

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In explaining possible reasons for the stark rise in 2022, the NFL’s chief medical officer, Allen Sills, said:

“There are a lot of factors we’re looking into that could be driving that. We’re doing more evaluations than ever. We did change the (diagnosis) protocol to become even more conservative. We had more medical timeouts … And certainly we know that we continue to emphasize the importance of player self-reporting, and we’ve seen fairly similar numbers with that.”

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Medical timeouts, Sills said, are when designated athletic-trainer spotters situated in the press box “call down to stop the game. We’ve had 33 of those thus far throughout the regular season and playoffs — (more) than we’ve ever had, by a very wide margin — almost double our previous high.

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“This shows, again, that we want to get anyone who might be injured off the field. And we continue to do 3-4 concussion evaluations for every one concussion that we diagnose. I think those statistics … show that we’re continuing to be even more conservative and cautious in the diagnosis and recognition of this injury.”

Sills underscored that there was no increase in the number of players who suffered multiple concussions in 2022, “meaning more than one per season, and no difference in return-to-play, meaning how long it took players to return. The median for return-to-play after a first concussion remains about nine days in the NFL, and for a second concussion it’s about 13 days.”

The best news on the concussion-limiting front was the success of padded helmet covers mandated, for the first time last summer, to be worn early on in training camp by players in certain position groups — equipment branded as “Guardian Caps.”

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At each preseason practice from the start of training camps in late last July, until the second preseason game in mid August, all offensive and defensive linemen around the league, plus all tight ends and linebackers, had to wear them.

The NFL announced Friday that concussions suffered league-wide in all 2022 preseason practices, through August, dropped in number to 25 — the lowest total since the league began documenting brain injuries in 2015, and 11 fewer than the previous five-year average of 36. That’s a 31% drop.

The drop was even more pronounced among specific position-group players mandated to wear the flexible, soft helmet covers, Sills said. Specifically, “a 52% reduction” during the mandate period, vs. the three-year average for those positions.

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“And of those concussions that occurred,” Sills added, “half of them, 50%, we’re due to impacts to the facemask, which is obviously an area not covered by the Guardian Cap.

“So I think our initial experience with the Guardian Cap was overwhelmingly positive. We did not see an up-tick in associated other injuries as a result of wearing the cap. And so we’ll be having a very active discussion about extending the use of the Guardian Cap — potentially more position groups, potentially (a longer) requirement period.”

Player complaints of poorly fitting Guardian Caps, and heat issues, are being addressed and researched by both the league and the players union, said Jeff Miller, NFL executive VP on health and safety. All initiatives and actions regarding player safety must be made jointly by the NFL and NFLPA, under long-standing terms in the collective bargaining agreement.

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“We think the fit will be better, with work that we have done with Guardian Cap,” Miller said. “We are researching issues around heat, and make sure that anything we can find there will be addressed.

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“We’ll look to expand the use of the Guardian Cap, probably beyond the second preseason, and probably to other position groups, because we saw such benefits from it this preseason.”

Miller said 60% of all concussions in games were suffered either by quarterbacks, or on special-teams plays.

“It’s something that, obviously, we’ll take away and talk to the competition committee about,” Miller said. “One out of every five concussions that we see occur on either kickoff or punt. The injury rate on kickoff or punt varies between 1.5 and two times (that of) a play from scrimmage. So there’s a lot of work to be done there. I don’t think there are any easy solutions.

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“And it’s not just concussions. About 20% of all ACL injuries that we see during the regular season occur on special teams.”

Miller said each and every quarterback concussion will be “deconstructed” via video over the next few weeks, and findings will be shared with the competition committee, to “take a look at how we might prevent” them.

“One potential intervention, which is exciting,” Miller said, “is I think we are getting very close now to a quarterback-specific helmet. We’ve talked now for a number of years now about our goal of position-specificity in helmets … Hopefully this year, if not next year, we’ll have something in that space.”

There have been concerns raised on social media as to whether helmet weights are responsible for more concussions as a result of when a players falling backward has the back of his helmet bounce hard off the field. There were several such incidents this season involving quarterbacks, most recently last Sunday with backup San Francisco 49ers quarterback Josh Johnson.

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Sills said the league will look closely at determining whether the number of “helmet to ground” concussions is going up.

“With regard to weight of the helmets … heavier is not always better, but at the same time, lighter is not always better either,” Sills said. “Our engineers always take that into account … It is an active area of discussion … I think we’ll have more to say about that in the off-season.”

One report said helmets last decade weigh 2.7 times heavier than those from the 1970s.

Other news that came off the call:

  • Overall injuries in games, preseason or regular season, we’re down 5.6% overall.
  • Typically, a disproportionate number of injuries occur during the first two weeks of training camp, especially leg injuries. At 2022 training camps, on-field workouts were limited time-wise as never before. Miller said as a result there was a 25% drop in injuries to lower extremities, and a 14% drop throughout all of training camp, year-over-year.
  • There was no increase in 2022 in per-game injury rates in the added week, for the 17th game, under the 2021 schedule expansion, Miller said. Nor was there an increase in injuries in International Series games overseas.
  • Field-surfaces injury data (that is, grass vs. artificial turf) for 2022 has not yet compiled.
  • As a result of the near-tragic Damar Hamlin incident early last month, when the Buffalo Bills safety survived cardiac arrest during a game, the league in collaboration with the American Heart Association and American Red Cross are promoting CPR education, and launching an initiative to increase the availability of proper emergency equipment in youth sports.

John Kryk writes a weekly newsletter on NFL matters. That’s where you can first see his straight-up picks each week. You can have the newsletter automatically dropped into your email inbox on Wednesdays simply by signing up — for free — at https://torontosun.com/newsletters/

[email protected]

@JohnKryk

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