It is widely known that injuries and football go hand in hand even at the professional level where athletes have been training there bodies to withstand long hours of gruesome exercise and big hits for almost two decades. When is the last time you have watched a NFL game without witnessing an injury on the field? These injuries are a large part of the game and can potentially end players' careers. However, the NFL is doing very little to prevent those injuries from happening. The focus in the NFL along with our sports society as a whole, is to treat injuries after they happen rather than an emphasis on injury prevention. The overarching term for this is "sports science," an overstuffed umbrella term for training, performance or rehabilitation procedures that come from a recent medical journal rather than inherited Vince Lombardi wisdom" (Tanier). Lombardi is one of the most famous coaches of all time in football, so great that the super bowl trophy is named after him. His methodology like most coaches today was the opposite of preventative medicine. He worked his players until their bodies deteriorated. This made him a very successful coach with players putting in their all for him and getting results. But this time in football was entirely different than what it is today. The game has evolved and is now much faster and more dangerous. One player that makes the game as amazing as it is today is Jordy Nelson. For star players such as Nelson of the Green Bay Packers, certain injuries can be avoided entirely with new research and training techniques. Injuries to the ACL and MCL especially can be avoided with a simple test of jumping off a milk carton and seeing how the ligaments react. This simple test could have saved Nelson's 2015 season and subsequently affected the season that the Packers had. The NFL does not do enough to protect its players. The rules need to be amended, the equipment need to be updated, and the players need to be properly trained to make a difference in the amount of injuries in the league. 

Some changes have already been made to the game in an attempt to protect the players, mostly focusing on protecting receivers. The NFL still fails to recognize what a catch is and this has cost teams wins in some scenarios, which, in a 16 game season is detrimental. The also still fail to come to a consensus on what it means for a receiver to be defenseless. These new rules have caused more harm than benefits in the league. The vagueness of the rules and the inconsistency of league officials making the penalty calls and handing out fines are to blame for this. The game of football has become faster and increasingly dangerous over the years and players are becoming better and more effective tacklers. This inevitably adds up to more injuries in the game of football, without new rules to regulate the game. In some peoples' opinion, the rules that have been added are not protecting players but instead just making the game harder to play for defenders. Other fans of the league say that the league as a whole is becoming too 'soft'. The big hits that were celebrated in 2005, are being punished in 2015. The focus of injuries in the National Football League needs to be switched from treatment to prevention. 

Along with Jordy Nelson many other star players have suffered injuries that have ended their seasons or careers. Arian Foster, star running back from the Houston Texans, suffered a torn achilles tendon without contact from another player and was out for the season. Foster is known to be one of the best running backs in the NFL and losing him was detrimental to the Texans' season. In such a competitive league coaches need their best players to perform and these season-ending injuries also end the chance for high performance happening. However, more research and focus into how to prevent these injuries instead of how to best treat them could greatly reduce or even eliminate their presence in the game. This technology could be even more useful in lower levels of football. In high school or college players are competing for their chance to play again. The players are driven by the chance to play in a bigger league, in more important games, and dreaming of playing in the "big league". These dreams may come to a sudden halt with the snap of a tendon. The chances of a college player to play professionally is 1.6% according to the NCAA (NCAA.org). This chance decreases when a player misses a year because of an injury. No NFL team wants to give a contract to an injury prone athlete and missing an entire year or even part of the season greatly reduces a player's stats. Players in the NFL depend on large contracts to sustain them after their time in the season and might not always support of injury prevention technology. According to the NFL Players Association, the average amount of time an NFL player will spend in the league is 3.3 years. This amount of time is short compared to other "normal" jobs, yet comes with much worse health risks. Implementing this technology could lengthen the amount of time played in the league while making it safer for longer careers as well.

Changing the amount of injuries in the NFL is something that is not going to be affected by changing one or two things. Multiple factors go into the failure to protect their players. One way to lower the amount of injuries in the NFL is to focus on preventative medicine. Preventative medicine focuses on training muscles to withstand more than normal. It also focuses on testing muscles to see which ones are genetically more vulnerable than other to fail. It is incredibly simple to test this genetic predisposition using only a phone and a milk carton. Mike Tanier explains this test in his article on Bleacher Report. This test was invented by Dr. Timothy Hewett, who has researched knee injuries for almost 20 years. A player stands on the carton with their heels off the back and just drop off of the carton and then leap straight in the air. This could be recorded on a phone and it would capture how the ligaments react to the test. This test was invented to show an imbalance in the use of one side or the other. If one ligament is being used more heavily than the other then that ligament is more at risk for injury. This simple test has yet to be implemented in the NFL. Partly because players do not want to be told they are at risk of an injury that may actually never occur. If scouts learn that a player was at risk for a season ending injury they would be much less likely to take them on the team. However this and other similar tests like it should be implemented in the league. The earlier in the football career that this imbalance is detected the better because then the strength difference is not as much and correction and prevention is easier to implement. This test could easily be performed at the high school or even pop-warner level. Pop-warner is the level of football kids play in from the ages of 7 to 13 before high school programs start. Preventing injuries before they have a change of occurring is something that should be in the NFL along with the other levels of football. This could provide insight on what muscles players might need to stretch or perform more strength conditioning on their less dominant leg.

Evidence that the preventative mindset pays off is in the league today. Players that perform exceptionally well even past their prime years, such as Tom Brady, show that this method works.  All NFL players train hard, but what if the solution was just to train differently? Tom Brady is one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time and he plans to play well into his 40s. After he tore his ACL he went to Alex Guerrero who has helped him transform his body into something close to a machine. Every minute of every day is planned out and methodically researched. Another example of this type of medicine working is Willie McGinest, who played 15 seasons as a running back in the NFL with Guerrero's help. This is unheard of for a running back in the NFL. If you train your body to withstand the hits that you're going to receive you will be able to prevent from future injuries, similar to Brady and McGinest. 

Another way to prevent injuries in the NFL begins before the season begins. Gary McCoy, a director for a company that makes wearable performance monitors for athletes and also a consult for many NFL teams for injury prevention, watched NFL teams on the first day of training coming back from the offseason, "[A]fter some basic stretching and drills, ran them through nearly 100 scripted plays. The players planted, cut, jumped and ran at full speed in the summer heat, over and over again" (Tanier). This is equivalent to a marathon runner going straight from six months of inactivity to running the Boston Marathon the next day. The amount of strain on the muscles and joints of these players is excruciating. Most of these players are competing for starting jobs on their respective teams so reporting an injury or taking it "slow" for them is not an option. They have to be able to perform at a high rate of play from day one if they want to be considered for playing time. This is the reason that so many players get injured in the preseason. They are severely overworked without proper attention to preventing any injuries. That is the way these training camps work and that is why they are not able to control how many injuries these players get. They push them too hard too quickly and all they can do it treat the injuries that do occur. Some teams, however, are using technology invented by McCoy's company that measures the amount of strain on an athletes joints. This information, if used correctly, could seriously reduce the amount of injuries a team has to deal with. A coach given information that a player is putting a tremendous amount of strain on his knee now has the option to sit him out for some drills and let him rest instead of just working him until it gives out. This technology can provide very helpful information to prevent injuries however it is all in the coach's hands to use that information. McCoy found that players from the team went from inactive to game speed had the most preventable injuries while the team that applied the science and information reported zero injuries (Tanier). This application of new technologies is what could prevent more than half of the injuries in the NFL in the near future.

The technology that goes into making the equipment needs to be upgraded as well in order to protect the players. In the NFL helmets were not a mandatory part of the uniform until 1943. They have been altered slightly in the materials that were used to create them but their job has remained the same. Helmets in the NFL do exactly what they are supposed to do. This piece of equipment was produced and used to protect the players from getting skull fractures or brain hemorrhages. The helmet is not built to prevent concussions by any means. The evolution of the game along with new medical research into the correlation between brain disease and NFL players shows that the old equipment needs to be revised. A company in Seattle called VICIS is working on just that. They are engineering a helmet that drastically limit the number of head injuries that occur. It is estimated that hits in the NFL are "equivalent to a bowling ball being dropped on a head from 8 feet high" (Stinson). This is a very dangerous number considering the equipment protecting the player is vastly outdated. There was a study conducted by Zachary Binney of footballoutsiders.com that tracked the amount of injuries in the league and what was injured during the entirety of the season. They found that in the first week players are at high risk for ligament and joint injuries due to going full speed without proper training. However, these numbers severely drop off after the first week and then continue to drop as the season goes on. For concussions however, the graph shows that they start out below all of the other types of injuries but the line is slowly increasing as time the season continues. This is because the risk for a concussion is not because of overuse, undertraining, or an imbalance in the muscles, it is because of a lack of technology and effort into protecting the most important part of a player's body. This helmet is proposed to "reduce the force of impact by anywhere from 20 to 50 percent," which in turn would reduce the amount of concussions in the game as well (Stinson). 

The most difficult part about creating rules and regulations that protect players is finding a balance. There will always be injuries in the game of football because of the level of violence that the game includes. However creating a balance between protecting its players and keeping the game interesting is difficult. The league is attempting to make tweaks to the rules every year in order to test what makes the game safer and what does not work out. This process is making the game confusing as players have to adapt to different rules each year and have less time to get used to them. This year the NFL eliminated chop blocks which is a positive change in my opinion. A chop block is when an offensive player dives at the thighs or lower of a defensive player while that player is already being blocked by another teammate. This eliminates the danger of many knee injuries. The NFL also cleared up many of their rules that they added in past years, including the defenseless receiver rule which protects players that are making a play on the ball from getting blindsided with a hit.

The National Football League needs to create rules that not only protect their players, but also keep the game fair. David Elfin begins his article by talking about how other leagues such as the MLB, NHL, and NCAA basketball have made rule changes over the years in response to performance and unfairness. He also argues that with the new changes in the NFL referees are too focused on protecting offensive players and defensive players are taking the punishment for it. He also talks about the evolution of rule changes in the NFL when they switched over to a 16 game season and the effects that had on the league. The rules that they changed "hampered defenders also improved player safety as penalties for vicious hits became more frequent and led to larger fines and even suspensions" (Elfin). This is because no penalties to protect defensive players were introduced into the league and the referee's mindset is to protect the offensive players. The offense is focused more on driving the ball up the field so their focus is on each other or on the ball rather than the opposing player running at them at full speed. However on the other end of those hits the defense is not getting the same treatment. They are being fined, being suspended, and having to adapt to a different interpretation of the rules based on what referee they have that day. DeAngelo Hall, a cornerback for the Washington Redskins argues, "If we want to protect guys, we gotta protect every single guy on the field, not just the receivers, the tight ends and the quarterbacks. We get hit just as hard as a lot of other guys, but we don't get any flags" (Elfin). He states that the defensive players are not being treated fairly by the league officials and its becoming just as big of a problem. Reed Doughty was concussed on a hit that was "one of the most vicious" hits Mike Shanahan, the Redskins head coach, has ever seen. Yet the player that delivered the gruesome hit was not fined or even penalized. Now Doughty has to sit out the next game or two with a concussion and nothing came of it on the other end. This inconsistency is what is wrong with the NFL today because each game is unique in that in one game a hit might get a player suspended and in others in might not even be a penalty. 

In order for the NFL to maintain popularity, in the future they need to revise and create rules that provide the players with a safe environment to play in while also keeping the game fair. This can be done with rules changes/amendments, upgrade in equipment, more training for referees, and more research into the cause of injuries. If the NFL makes an effort to protect its players in the future then the popularity of the game will increase because the risk of injury will decrease. They can achieve this by first focusing on the mandatory equipment in their league. A new helmet that is scientifically proven to reduce head injuries could have a major impact in the game itself. With a more protective and smarter design, the helmet could be used to protect the players in big collisions instead of being used to ram into the opponent. They could also require more protective leg padding and chest padding to reduce the amount of injuries from receiving hits in those areas. Second, the NFL needs to focus on rules regarding player safety that they have already implemented or need to implement. They need to revise the current rules in the game as they focus too harshly on punishing the defense and work on creating a fair environment to play in for both sides. The rules that they make need to be revised and made clearer in order to diminish the chance of misinterpretation by referees. A good system for this would be to punish players based on how much damage they do to another player. If the guy that they injure is out for two weeks then they should be banned for two games. This applies to both offense and defense. Lastly, to actually prevent injuries from occurring, especially non-contact injuries, the NFL should sponsor technology companies that are making this sports related technology that could predict injuries before they occur. This might not be the most popular option by players of the league or especially in college leagues however this is the most plausible solution to overuse. These changes would provide the National Football League with a handful of solutions in order to fix their broken mindset on what to do about injuries in the NFL. The focus of sports medicine in not only the NFL, but all sports in general, needs to be switched from treatment methods to preventative methods.

