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The NFL revealed on Friday that concussions rose by 18% in 2022 when compared to the 2021 season.
The league also stated that there were 149 concussions suffered over 271 games this season. That number is also 14% higher than the three-year average between 2018 and 2020, Kevin Seifert of ESPN reports.
The increased number of concussions suffered by NFL players in 2022 comes despite the NFL requiring linemen and linebackers to wear a padded “guardian cap” to limit head injuries during training camp.
The NFL cited the fact that practice concussions were actually reduced to an eight-year low of 25 (a 52% reduction from the 2021 season) in large part due to the “guardian caps.”
“We continue to become more cautious and conservative in our evaluation and diagnosis of concussions,” NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said on Friday. “That’s not just an opinion. That’s backed up by the data.”
Sills did not say whether he thought the numbers were driven by better diagnostics, but he did reveal that league medical staffs performed an average of 1.6 evaluations per game — a number that has risen over time, Sills said. In addition, he said, there were nearly twice as many medical timeouts in 2022 by independent spotters and on-field officials compared to 2021.
Also on the call, NFL Executive VP Jeff Miller said the league is “getting very close to a quarterback-specific helmet.”
“We’ve talked now for a number of years about our goal of position specificity and helmets, and for the first time saw an offensive line helmet design from VICIS,” said Miller. “Hopefully [as soon as] this fall, we will see an entrant in that space that looks at the sorts of hits that quarterbacks take and adjust the helmet to prevent against those.”
Overall, the NFL reported that total preseason and regular-season player injuries were down 5.6% and injuries to the lower extremities fell by 14%.
However, injuries on punt and kickoff returns continued to be “disproportionate” to the frequency of plays.
NFL fans were none too kind to the NFL on social media, especially since the league decided to drop this news on a Friday afternoon.
The operative word here is "diagnosed" concussions.
Reminder: On the Week 3 injury report there were only 2 reported concussions.
Following Tua Tagovailoa's (second) concussion in Week 4, the NFL reported 11 concussions — a 450% increase. 🤔https://t.co/9hhzWP7AvY
— Karisa Maxwell McKee (@KarisaMaxwell) February 3, 2023
“Concussion rate didn’t rise, the NFL just started caring more about them,” someone else tweeted.
Let's add an 18th regular season game... #NFL #Concussions https://t.co/4wtmQzre5c
— Justin LaSalata (@justinlasalata) February 3, 2023
“This is measurement fallacy — NFL finally started actually screening for concussions properly and discovered there are a lot more of them than expected by ‘gridiron, tough, rah rah’ types,” tweeted another fan.
Leave it to Roger Goodell’s cronies to say with a straight face while patting themselves on the back that concussions are up from last year because of all the concussions they missed last year
— gino (@ginoradja) February 3, 2023
“Almost like more regular season games without a real plan for player safety was a bad idea,” another fan stated.
https://twitter.com/biavirginia/status/1621606894988034051