The Concussion Blog

The Concussion Blog Original, NFL Concussion Report, is a weekly compiling of the reported head injuries in the National Football League.  Concussions are added to the list each week from multiple sources to give you the reader a picture of what is happening on the field.  Each week we will bring you the information along with relevant statistics.  If we have missed a concussion or put one on here erroneously, let us know (we will also be using Fink’s Rule to classify a concussion/head injury).

Regular season concussion/head injury numbers have eclipsed the century mark; 104 to be exact.

All of the byes have taken place and there will be 16 games per week going forward; based upon stats we can expect 2-3 more concussions per week to be listed.  Specific injuries to highlight this week were few, as most have been attended to, the Gronkowski incident not withstanding.  There were three players put on injured reserve due to concussions this week: Scott Mruczkowski, Clint Session and David Thomas.  Speaking of Thomas he is the first player I have seen with the new Riddell 360 that has suffered a concussion.

Speaking of helmets it is time to break down the helmet data once again.  Our random helmet sample provided us with this information;

• Riddell – 62%
• 35% VSR4, 27% Revolution, 38% RevoSpeed
• Schutt – 36 %
• 45% AiR, 49% AiRXP, 2% Ion4D, 4% DNA
• Other – 2%

Our information regarding current concussion listing and helmets;

• Riddell – 65%
• 24% VSR4, 25% Revolution, 50% RevoSpeed, 1% 360
• Schutt – 35%
• 33% AiR, 57% AiRXP, 7% Ion4D, 3% DNA

That should spark some good conversation about head-gear, from my perspective the maker of helmet seems not to matter at all, as should be expected, however the trends inside each helmet maker shows some variance.  The biggest variance is with the most worn helmet of each maker, which can influence the overall numbers, as does position.  I will say this, as I did last year, the helmets need to be controlled for position.  I do believe there are benefits to each helmet/maker by position.  I can conclude one thing for sure, the number or VSR4’s on the field have significantly decreased since last year, which to me is a good thing.

Enough of the helmet information, on to the regular season stats (140 overall);

• 104 Concussions/head injuries (90 W10)
• 9.45 Concussions/week (9.00 W10)
• 161 Projected Concussions (153 W10)
• 0.63 Concussions/game (0.60 W10)
• 11.16% InR (10.63 W10)
• 9.48% EInR (9.02 W10)
• 54 Offensive – 50 Defense
• Positionally Speaking
• QB – 3, RB – 10, TE – 12, WR – 11, OL – 18, DL – 9, LB – 16, DB – 25
• Team Breakdown
• OAK – 8
• CAR, PHI, SEA, STL – 6
• BAL, CLE, NYG, SD – 5
• ATL, DEN, IND, JAX, NE – 4
• DET, KC, MIN, NO, NYJ, PIT, SF, TEN – 3
• ARI, CHI, GB – 2
• DAL, TB – 1
• BUF, CIN, HOU, MIA, WAS – 0

Our definition of Incidence Rate (InR) is projected concussions/45 players taking the field per team per game, our definition of Epidemiological Incidence Rate (EInR) is projected concussions/53 man roster per team.

NOTES: It was an offensive week for concussions as of the 14, 11 were on the offense…  In the karma department Brandon Merriweather of the Bears found himself with a concussion…  Mean concussions/team is 3.25, there are still 10 teams under that number with 5 yet to report one in the regular season…  The offensive line concussions are becoming a worrisome trend in my mind…