Football carries one of the highest injury rates of any sport at every level of play. In the NFL, players sustain roughly 34 injuries per 1,000 game exposures each season. High school football sees about 21 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures across games and practices combined. Whether you’re a parent weighing the risks for your child or a player curious about your own odds, the numbers paint a clear picture: most football players will deal with some form of injury during their career, though severity varies enormously.
Injury Rates by Level of Play
At the professional level, NFL data from 2017 through 2022 shows a consistent average of about 34 injuries per 1,000 athlete exposures per game. That rate held steady even after the league added a 17th regular season game in 2021, suggesting the extra game didn’t meaningfully change per-game risk. Interestingly, teams that made the playoffs actually had slightly lower injury rates (18.4 per 1,000 exposures) than teams that missed the postseason (19.9 per 1,000 exposures).
High school football injury rates hover around 20.9 per 1,000 athlete exposures, which is remarkably close to per-game NFL rates. That said, these numbers include both practices and games, and the risk isn’t distributed evenly between the two. College football falls in a similar range, with extensive NCAA surveillance data confirming that football consistently leads all collegiate sports in total injuries reported.
Games Are Far More Dangerous Than Practice
If you only play in organized practices and skip games, your risk drops dramatically. Research on college football found that the game injury rate is over six times higher than the practice injury rate. This difference is statistically significant and has been confirmed across multiple studies. The intensity, unpredictability, and full-speed collisions of live games create a fundamentally different risk environment than even full-contact practice sessions.
There’s an interesting wrinkle here: teams that practiced with more full contact actually saw lower game injury rates. The theory is that controlled contact in practice better prepares the body for game conditions, though more contact in practice does carry its own injury risk.
The Most Common Football Injuries
NCAA surveillance data from 2014 through 2019 breaks down what actually happens when football players get hurt. Sprains account for nearly 29% of all reported injuries, followed by strains at about 19% and bruises at roughly 14%. Concussions make up 7.5% of all injuries, making them the single most commonly diagnosed specific injury in college football.
In terms of body parts, the knee takes the most punishment at 15.5% of all injuries, followed by the shoulder (13.5%), ankle (12.5%), and head or face (9.2%). The three most frequent specific diagnoses tell you a lot about the sport: concussions, ankle sprains, and hamstring tears. These three alone account for nearly one in five injuries.
ACL Tears: A Career-Altering Risk
Among the most feared football injuries, ACL tears deserve special attention because of how long they sideline players and how they can alter a career trajectory. In the NFL, any given player has a 1.9% chance of tearing their ACL in a single season. That might sound small, but stretched across a typical career of several seasons, the cumulative risk adds up quickly.
Preseason is actually more dangerous for ACL injuries than the regular season on a per-play basis. The preseason ACL injury rate is more than double the regular season rate (6.1 versus 2.7 per 10,000 player-plays). Younger players face the steepest risk: those with three or fewer years of NFL experience tear their ACL in preseason at nearly twice the rate of more experienced players. This likely reflects a combination of less-conditioned bodies, unfamiliar playing speeds, and roster competition that pushes players to overextend.
Which Positions Get Hurt Most
Not all positions carry equal risk. Defensive backs consistently have the highest number of injuries across multiple categories, including total injuries, lower extremity injuries requiring time off, and in-game injuries. This makes sense given the position’s demands: defensive backs sprint, change direction explosively, and engage in collisions with receivers and ball carriers in open space, where impacts are less predictable than in the trenches.
The pattern holds true across studies and seasons. If you’re choosing a position or evaluating risk for a young player, the secondary is statistically the most dangerous place on the field.
Long-Term Brain Health Risks
Beyond the injuries that show up on game day, football carries a well-documented risk to long-term brain health. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology found a clear dose-response relationship between the level of football played and the risk of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the degenerative brain disease linked to repeated head impacts.
After adjusting for the fact that brain banks tend to receive donations from people already suspected of having brain disease, researchers estimated that college football players had about 2.4 times the risk of CTE compared to those who only played in high school. Professional players had roughly 2.5 times the risk of high school-only players. The cumulative incidence numbers are stark: an estimated 5 CTE cases per 100,000 deaths among former high school players, 376 per 100,000 among college players, and over 10,700 per 100,000 among former professionals. The more years and the higher the level of play, the greater the risk.
How the NFL Is Trying to Reduce Injuries
The league has made several structural changes aimed at lowering injury rates, particularly for head injuries. Concussion protocols now pull players from games for evaluation. Rule changes have targeted the kickoff, historically one of the most dangerous plays in football. In 2011, the kicking line moved forward to the 35-yard line to reduce high-speed collisions. In 2024, the NFL introduced the “Dynamic Kickoff,” which repositions players on the field to limit the distance and speed of collisions before contact.
Equipment improvements, including better helmet technology and discussions about requiring protective head caps on certain plays, represent another front in the effort. Some analysts have even floated eliminating the kickoff entirely. Despite these changes, the overall injury rate has remained relatively stable across recent seasons, suggesting that the fundamental nature of the sport, not any single play type, drives the bulk of injury risk.
Putting the Numbers in Perspective
Football’s injury rate is high compared to most other sports, but it’s worth understanding what “injury” means in this context. The studies defining injuries as anything requiring medical attention from an athletic trainer or physician capture everything from minor bruises that don’t cost any playing time to season-ending ligament tears. Research on youth football classifies injuries as minor (fewer than 8 days lost), moderate (8 to 21 days), or severe (more than 21 days), and many injuries fall into the minor category.
Still, the overall picture is honest: football is a collision sport, and collisions cause injuries. At every level, from youth leagues to the NFL, a significant percentage of participants will experience at least one injury requiring medical attention during a season. The type and severity of those injuries depend heavily on position, level of play, experience, and conditioning. The players most at risk are those in open-field positions, those in their first few years at a new level, and those who play more games at higher intensity.