The Effect of Thursday Night Games on In-Game Injury Rates in the National Football League

Abstract

Background: Although claims of increased injury rates with Thursday night National Football League (NFL) games exist, a paucity of data exist substantiating these claims. Purpose: To evaluate the effect of rest between games on in-game injury rates as it pertains to overall injury incidence, location, and player position. Study Design: Descriptive epidemiologic study. Methods: Data were obtained from official NFL game books for regular season games from all 32 teams for the 2013-2016 seasons. All in-game injuries recorded in official game books were included. Rest periods between games were classified as short (4 days), regular (6-8 days), or long (≥10 days). Overall observed injury rates per team-game were analyzed in relation to different rest periods using negative binomial regression. For results with significant overall findings, pairwise comparisons were tested using the Wald chi-square test. Exploratory secondary analyses were performed in a similar fashion to assess differences in injury rates for the different rest periods when stratified by anatomic location and player position. Results: A total of 2846 injuries were identified throughout the 4 seasons. There was an overall significant difference in injuries per team-game between short, regular, and long rest ( P = .01). With short rest, an observed mean of 1.26 injuries per game (95% CI, 1.06-1.49) was significantly different from the 1.53 observed injuries per game with regular rest (95% CI, 1.46-1.60; P = .03), but not compared with the 1.34 observed injuries per game with long rest ( P = .56). For player position, only the tight end, linebacker, and fullback group demonstrated significant differences between the injury rates for different rest categories. Quarterback was the only position with more injuries during games played on Thursday compared with both regular and long rest. This specific analysis was underpowered and the difference was not significant ( P = .08). No differences were found regarding injury rates in correlation with differences in rest periods with different injury locations. Conclusion: A short rest period between games is not associated with increased rates of observed injuries reported in NFL game books; rather, our data suggest there are significantly fewer injuries for Thursday night games compared with games played on regular rest. Future research correlating rest and quarterback injury rates is warranted.

Game Spacing and Density in Relation to the Risk of Injuries in the National Hockey League

“…Our results suggest that when considering individual game spacing alone, there is no additional risk of injuries as long as there is at least 1 day of rest between games. This is in agreement with data from the National Football League in which shortened rest, but still at least 3 days between games, did not result in an increased rate of injuries, 2,16 and indeed, there was a statistically significant decrease in the injury rate for the games with shorter rest. This does not necessarily imply a complete physical recovery or the ability to perform optimally, as there is evidence that soccer players demonstrate decreased measures of physical performance and increased biomarkers of muscle fatigue/inflammation, such as elevated creatine kinase, for up to 72 hours after a game.…”

“…This has been the subject of research in different sports but with varying results. 2,4,6,16,20,22 Moreover, this has been a source of concern for those in the NHL, with periods of condensed schedules being blamed for a perceived increase in injuries. 10,23 This study sought to examine whether condensed game schedules have an impact on injuries in the NHL.…”

Effect of Passing Plays on Injury Rates in the National Football League

“…This is not the first study to use the NFL gamebooks to examine in-game injury rates because a recent study published by Perez at al. used gamebooks to evaluate injury rates for games played on short rest (i.e., Thursday Night Football) (13).…”

The Interval Between Matches Significantly Influences Injury Risk in Field Hockey

“…Although these findings emphasise the need for sufficient recovery between football matches, the transferability of these findings to other sports is limited. Multiple studies report that the addition of mid-week American football matches has no influence on injury rates [12,13], although the interval between matches still remains over three days. Regardless of mixed findings and uncertainty regarding the critical time windows for an increased injury risk, growing concerns over increasing player workload demands across the football season [14] were further piqued when Liverpool played matches on consecutive days in 2019.…”