Week Four of this NFL season was not good for even more key players. It added two star wide receivers to the growing list of key players who have suffered major injuries. Both the New York Giants’ Malik Nabers, who tore his right anterior cruciate ligament, and the Miami Dolphins’ Tyreek Hill, who dislocated his left knee, are now lost for the season. The striking rate at which players have been struck from lineups due to injuries does beg the question, “what’s going on,” in the words of 4 Non Blondes. Well, let’s take a look at what factors may be contributing.
Have NFL Injury Rates Been Increasing?
Of course, feeling like there’s been more injuries isn’t the same as statistically showing it. It’s still be a bit too early to tell whether the entire 2025-2026 NFL season will end up being worse injury-wise than previous seasons. It’s also difficult to tell for sure whether injury rates have been indeed trending upwards in recent years. A study published in the Arthroscopy, Sports Medicine, and Rehabilitation journal did show a increase in injury rates in the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 seasons compared to the preceding seasons. But the early 2020s was when that little thing called the COVID-19 pandemic was sort of mixing everything up, and a PubMed search for studies covering more recent, less pandemic-y years yielded zilch, otherwise known as nada.
Anecdotally, though, it does seem like more big names have been missing more time this season. For example, just look at how many quarterbacks have been hobbled so far. I’ve already written in Forbes about the toe-tally tough situations with Bengal QB Joe Burrow being out for at least three months with turf toe and 49ers QB Brock Purdy missing games due to his toe woes. Add to them Commanders QB Jayden Daniels, who suffered a knee sprain in Week 2, Vikings QB J.J. McCarthy, who sustained a high ankle sprain that same week, Jets QB Justin Fields, who missed Week 3 due to a concussion, Titans QB Will Levis whose season was ended by a shoulder injury and Ravens QB Lamar Jackson who left a Week 4 game with a hamstring injury.
Have NFL Playing Surfaces Been Contributing To Injuries?
To get more grounding on what may be happening, let’s first look at the ground, the playing surfaces. That’s because the composition of a football field can really affect how much force is applied to at least three of your body parts, your toes, ankles and knees, that are commonly injured in football. All NFL fields used to be natural grass until Astroturf launched into the scene in the late 1960s. After more and more NFL stadiums adopted this synthetic stuff, the NFL Players Association began complaining about more and more non-contact injuries among players. As former player J.C. Tretter posted in 2024 on the NFLPA website when he was the NFLPA’s director, “Grass will eventually give, which often releases the cleat prior to reaching an injurious load. On synthetic surfaces, there is less give, meaning our feet, ankles and knees absorb the force, which makes injury more likely to follow.”
Granted, the artificial fields these days are not the same as the original Brillo Pad-like Astroturf, with subsequent efforts to make synthetic surfaces to be more grass-like, softer with more give. Still, players have argued that nothing beats the natural stuff. In his “Only Natural Grass Can Level The NFL’s Playing Field” NFLPA post, Tretter wrote, “The NFLPA is advocating for teams to convert artificial practice and game fields to natural grass fields.”
Has The Changing NFL Schedule Contributed To Injuries?
Another potential issue is the NFL schedule. The regular season has gone from being 14 games long from 1961 through 1977 to 16 games from 1978 through 2020 up to 17 games since 2021. The length of the post-season has grown as well with the number of teams making the playoffs ballooning from 12 to 14 in 2020. More games could mean more pounding, both in official games and practice, and shorter off-seasons for players to rest and recover.
At the same time, times have changed with the times that players have between games. Games have gone from being only on Sundays and Monday nights to being on more and more different days of the week. Recall how New Orleans Saints defensive end Cameron Jordan joked in a 2024 AP article, ““We’re going to be the new 7-Eleven. NFL, 24 hours, you can watch them play any given day.” One does have to wonder how the TV-watching convenience of having football on so many days affects players’ rest and recovery.
Have Changes In The Pre-NFL Careers Of Players Had Effects?
Then there have been changes in what players have been doing to make it to the NFL. The Aspen Institute’s Project Play has been warning about more and more kids specializing more and more in one sport earlier and earlier in their lives, with parents somehow believing that such early focus is needed to become a star player. The trouble is such specialization rather than having kids participate in a wider variety of physical activity can lead to overuse of certain body parts. And this wear and tear can add up over time. Add to that the lengthening of college football seasons in recent years, and by the time players reach the NFL, they may have a lot more mileage and accumulated beating to certain body parts, making them more prone to injury.
Of course, it is difficult to tell what specifically may be going on in the NFL without more data and scientific studies. All of this is a reminder that before making any major change in anything, it is a good idea to use that thing called science to figure out what the ramifications may be. Otherwise, the changes may end hurting you and others in more ways than one.
