Football and injuries are somewhat synonymous. Whether it is at the youth level or at the professional level, players get injured. With that said, the National Football League is currently going through a culture change to help prevent and diagnose injuries to improve player safety at all levels of football.
In its 2015 Health and Safety Report, the NFL is focusing on decreasing the number of head and brain injuries to its players. Over the past three seasons, the NFL has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of concussions and head injuries thanks to different rule changes and equipment improvements. Since the 2012 season, concussions in regular season games are down 35 percent and concussions due to helmet-to-helmet collisions are down 43 percent. According to the Health and Safety Report, there were 112 concussions that occurred out of the 256 regular season games, which equates to less than half of a concussion per game.
In 2013, the NFL partnered with GE and Under Armor to create the Head Health Initiative. This project was designed to prevent, quickly diagnose, and further understand traumatic brain injuries in football. The initiative includes two components, one being a four-year, $40 million research and development program to create next generation brain imaging technologies to help diagnose and treat patients with traumatic brain injuries. The other, a two-year challenge that allows scientists and researchers the opportunity to create new technology, such as more protective helmets and under-layers for synthetic turf, to help the NFL better understand, diagnose, and protect against traumatic brain injury. As an incentive, the NFL is dishing out up to $20 million in grants to the best submissions that they receive.
In March 2015, the NFL approved the medical timeout, which was implemented for the 2015 season. The medical timeout comes from an expert certified athletic trainer positioned in the press box, also known as the “eye in the sky”. The trainer is now allowed to call a timeout when they identify a player with a potential injury that may require further attention. The trainer has the authorization to stop the game without taking a timeout away from either team. According to Jeff Miller, the NFL’s Senior Vice President of Health and Safety Policy, as of Week 9, the medical timeout has only been used twice. With medical staffs and officials on the lookout for injuries more than ever, the use of the medical timeout is primarily for when an injury goes unnoticed.
With technology constantly evolving, the NFL has now moved to using Microsoft Surface tablets on the sidelines to look at recent plays during a game. Using the Surface tablets makes it simple for a player to look at the previous play on the sidelines to diagnose what they could have done better. The tablets are also used to keep electronic medical records for every player. Using EMR’s allows medical staffs to view a player’s medical history with ease. At any point during the game, a trainer can check the records to see the previous injuries and diagnosis that a player has had, making it even easier to know the best way to treat that player. All Surface tablets are equipped with the X2 app, which includes a step-by-step checklist of assessing a player with a possible head injury. The app allows medical staffs to quickly diagnose players with a possible in-game concussion.
Surface tablets aren’t the only technology being used to diagnose injuries; NFL medical staffs now have sideline video monitors that allow them to watch video of any play. The video is only available to the team’s medical staff and allows them to review the mechanism of an injury to dissect what happened and find the best way to treat the player.
Although the NFL is concerned with the health and safety of its players, it is also working to make youth and high-school football safer. In 2013, the NFL teamed up with USA Football to create the “Heads Up Football” program. The program was created to teach players the proper tackling techniques along with teaching coaches and parents the safest way to teach their kids the game of football. The Heads Up Football program also appoints Player Safety Coaches for every youth league to enforce safety protocols, ensure proper equipment fitting, and teach parents, coaches, and players the proper way to diagnose a concussion.
Today more than 6,300 youth football leagues and 1,000 high school leagues are a part of the Heads Up Football Program, which includes over 1 million players. According to a Datalys Center Study released February 2015, which was published in The Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine (OJSM), a global, peer-reviewed journal, Heads Up Football leagues have 76 percent fewer injuries and 30 percent fewer concussions than non-Heads Up Football leagues.
It is clear that the NFL is putting a massive amount of effort into player safety, but the players must be willing to cooperate in order to make the efforts as successful as possible. This means that a culture change must take place within the NFL and players must be more concerned with their own personal safety along with the safety of their fellow players. “We are seeing a culture change as it relates to taking the head out of the game. The goal is to minimize head contact as much as possible. The players deserve a great deal of credit for adjusting the way they’ve adjusted to rule changes over the years, and the results are encouraging,” said Jeff Miller NFL’s SVP of Health and Safety Policy. The NFL is making strides to increase player safety, and with technology rapidly advancing the results can only get better from here.