The answer

The fairest single measure we found: a player shows up on his team's weekly injury report with an injury he was not listed with before, and then does not play that week. Whether he played comes from snap counts, not from the Out or Questionable label, because teams changed how they use those labels in 2025 (see 302). Players who were on a reserve list earlier in the season (almost always injured reserve) are left out unless you switch them on, since they reappear on the report without a new injury.

The data cannot say why each player sat out. An injury listing followed by no snaps is the closest the public record comes to "an injury that cost him the game", and a few will have sat for other reasons.

Rates are per 100 team-games (each game counts twice, once per team), so seasons and teams with byes compare fairly.

What counts as a new injury

Include Week 1 (injuries carried in from training camp) Include players who were on a reserve list earlier this season

Week by week

Each week of 2026 against the lowest and highest of the ten earlier seasons in that same week.

Players on injured reserve (IR) have to sit out a set number of games before they can come back (three in 2021, under that season's rules). The weekly roster files carry a separate IR code only from Week 8 of 2020, so this comparison runs 2021-2026. Before that, IR was lumped in with other reserve lists.

The 2026 story is the start: players were on IR in Week 1, against to in the five seasons before. Teams have since caught up with their usual pace: players were moved onto IR in Weeks 2-10 (counting those who came off it and went back on), inside the 2021-2025 range of to .

Teams on a bye

Carry their roster forward from the week before Count only teams with a roster that week

The roster files have no rows for a team on its bye, so the raw weekly count dips whenever teams rest. Carrying the bye team's last roster forward fixes that.

The players

A quarterback injury is the one every fan notices. This counts each team's opening-game starter who then failed to start a game through Week 9 while the injury report listed him Out or Doubtful with an injury, or while he was on injured reserve or the PUP list. Benchings, rest and the COVID list do not count.

Also count starts missed while listed Questionable (adds Deshaun Watson in 2026, concussion, Week 9)

Two sources, and they measure different things. The weekly injury reports show when a player is listed with a concussion; we count a listing as new when he was not listed with one on his team's previous report. The league's own count (NFL and IQVIA, its data partner) is diagnosed concussions in games and practices, preseason included, and it is published once a year.

On the weekly reports, 2026 is mid-range: of 11 seasons. Since Week 2 the reports have shown to new concussions a week.

The league's published totals

Sources: CNN, NFL Concussions Fast Facts, which compiles the NFL and IQVIA figures; NFL, 2024 season injury data; NFL, 2023 season injury data; NFL, 2024 preseason (44).

The often-quoted figure of about 180 a season matches 2024's 182, but that total includes preseason and practices. Take out the 44 preseason concussions and 138 remain for the regular season, about 8 a week over 18 weeks, still counting practices.

The players

Players listed with a hamstring, calf, groin, quadriceps, adductor, hip flexor, abdominal or oblique injury. The report names the body area, not the diagnosis, so most but not all of these are strains. The chart counts every new listing after each team's first game, whether or not the player then sat out, including players named only on the practice report.

2026 has the most of these listings of the 11 seasons. It also has the most new injury listings of every kind ( per 100 team-games, against to before), so muscle injuries make up a normal share: %, of 11. Teams are listing more of everything; muscle injuries are not standing out from the rest.

See only the muscle injuries that cost a player a game, with the filters in 102

The league's medical data tells a different story for 2025: "There was also a decrease in hamstring and other lower-extremity strains – traditionally the highest injury burden for NFL players – with the rate now half of what it was between 2018 and 2022" (NFL, 2025 Season Key Takeaways). Two things differ. The league set 2025 against 2018-2022, while the chart above sets 2026 against 2016-2025; on these reports 2025 was itself a little below 2024. And the league counts diagnosed injuries from team medical records, while the weekly report is what teams choose to list. Both can be true if teams now list more of these injuries. No 2026 league figure exists yet. Nothing here points to less practice time as a cause: if it were driving muscle injuries, their share of all listings would be rising, and it is not.

Numbers that have been going around, checked against the same records.

What was compared

The regular season of every year from 2016 to 2026, matched week for week: Weeks 1-9 for injury reports and games, Weeks 1-10 for rosters, since 2026 had completed Week 9 when this was built. Earlier seasons are cut at the same week, so a 17-game season is never set against a 16-game one. "From Week 2" means after each team's first game; in 2017 Miami and Tampa Bay opened in Week 2 after a hurricane postponed their game.

Four ways to define a new injury

Not on his team's previous report

The default. The previous report is the one from the team's last game week, so a bye does not make an old injury look new.

First time on any report this season

The strictest: each player counts once, the first week he is listed.

Not on either of the two previous reports

Skips players who drop off the report for one week and come back.

Not on the previous report, or listed there with a different injury

The widest: also counts a player who was on the report with an ankle and is now listed with a knee.

Traps in the data, and one blind spot

1. Out means something different since 2025. Teams list fewer players Questionable, so Out jumped from 35-43% of designations to about half. Any count of Outs makes 2025 and 2026 look worse. Whether a Questionable player plays has not changed (about two in three do), so this page uses whether the player actually played.
2. Players coming back from injured reserve reappear on the report with the injury that put them there. Counting them as new inflated the early-season numbers.
3. Byes. Roster files have no rows for a team on its bye, and a player listed before a bye looks new after it unless the comparison skips to the team's previous game.
4. Labels drift. "Thigh" became "Quadricep" over the years, "right Shoulder" sits beside "Shoulder"; we fold them together.
5. What 102 misses. A player hurt in a game and moved straight to injured reserve before the next report never shows up there as a missed game; he is counted in 201 instead. Teams use short IR stints more since the 2020 rule changes, which can move injuries from one count to the other. That is why the two are shown side by side.
6. IR codes start in late 2020. Earlier rosters do not separate injured reserve from other reserve lists, so IR comparisons begin with 2021, the first full season.

Player IDs link injury reports to snap counts for all but a handful of listings ( in 2026, in 2025); those few are left out rather than guessed. Six team-weeks between 2017 and 2024 have no injury-report rows at all (none in 2026); they are read as clean reports, which can make the following week's listings look new.

How it was checked

Ken's system computed every number from the source files and then sent the definitions, without the answers, to independent AI engines from different labs to recompute and to attack. Several rounds of that moved the answer before it settled; the revisions in 101 are the latest.

Sources

• Weekly injury reports, as compiled by nflverse from the league's official reports: nflverse injuries. The same reports are on NFL.com, week by week.
• Weekly rosters and reserve status: nflverse weekly rosters.
• Snap counts (who played): nflverse snap counts, originally from Pro Football Reference.
• Games, byes and starting quarterbacks: nflverse games. Player IDs: nflverse players.
• Field definitions: nflverse injury data dictionary.

Downloads

• Every season, every measure
• Every injury that cost a game, all seasons, with each definition flagged
• Players on IR in Week 1, 2021-2026
• Players moved onto IR in Weeks 2-10, 2021-2026
• Opening-game starting quarterbacks who missed starts, 2016-2026
• New muscle-injury listings, 2016-2026
• New concussion listings, 2016-2026