NFL Injury Report

The NFL is a professional American football (gridiron) league that stands as one of the most exciting sporting leagues in the world. The NFL full form stands for the National Football League. Founded on September 17, 1920, the NFL started with 10 teams and has grown since then to include a total of 32 franchises.

The NFL consists of two conferences, namely the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC), with 16 teams in each conference. These 16 teams are further divided into 4 sub-divisions for each conference, thus giving us the below structure.

The 32 teams each play a very grueling season of 17 regular season games. The regular season lasts for 18 weeks as teams play a game every week with one week in the middle of the season allotted as a bye week for each team. Post the 17 game regular season, the NFL playoffs take place which consists of 4 rounds known as the Wild Card Round, Divisional Round, Conference Championship Round, and finally the Super Bowl.

As gridiron football is a contact-heavy sport and one of the most physical ones in the world, injuries are a part and parcel of the game. The NFL, which is the most widely known professional gridiron football league, has a very long list of injuries every season. Therefore, teams need to have several backup players on their squads ready in case of any emergencies. Let us discover why injuries in the NFL have such an impact on a franchise over the course of their season.

Why are injuries a big deal in the NFL?

Each NFL team has a huge 53-man roster plus additional members in their practice squad. So, one would think that losing a few players due to injury should be no big deal as another player can just step in and continue the game. However, it is not as simple as that. Even in a team sport like American football, players have different levels of skill sets and talent.

For example, replacing one player in a critical position such as the quarterback can completely derail the team’s season. The reason is simple. Each team has one starting quarterback and generally, the backups are not as adept at leading the team towards a successful season for long periods of time. As a result, an injured quarterback or any other superstar player who gets injured leaves behind a huge void that is nearly impossible to fill.

Furthermore, most of the injuries in the league sideline players for a long time, meaning they will miss out on a chunk of games. On the other hand, some injuries such as ACL tears can be season-ending as they take around six to nine months to heal completely.

The NFL injury report comes in very handy for fantasy football players too as they can make changes to their squad accordingly. Seeing the injury report enables fantasy players to update their team by substituting players who will miss a game or two and is especially important when they come across players from their team who have just suffered a season-ending injury.