The Hidden Health Costs of NFL Football

When Detroit Lions linebacker Jack Campbell was left motionless after a neck injury during last Sunday’s game against the Minnesota Vikings, fans saw how quickly a routine play can go wrong. Many were left with unwanted feelings of guilt.

As columnist Ian O’Connor wrote in The Athletic, enjoying the hard hits that make the game exciting also means ignoring that it can leave players with lasting physical and mental injuries. After beating the Vikings, Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown told reporters that players have to quickly shift from worrying about their teammates to refocusing on the game.

“They cart him off, and it’s like, ‘OK, we gotta go back to playing football,’” St. Brown said. “So, that’s really the hardest part, is trying to be a human, then having to be a football player again.”

A recent study found that about 75% of NFL players who died between 2008 and 2023 had CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy), a brain disease caused by repeated head impacts. Researchers at Boston University and Mass General Brigham, along with the Concussion & CTE Foundation, studied NFL players who died in the past 15 years. The NFL says it has prioritized safety by adding new rules and better equipment. Even so, the dangers of a sport built on fast, hard collisions are still very real.

The league is also extending the season. If the regular season grows to 18 games, players will have more chances to get hurt. Playing on Thursday nights also means athletes have less time to recover between games.

Players also feel pressure to return to the field before they’re fully healed. For example, Christian Watson of the Green Bay Packers left an ambulance to rejoin a game after breaking a rib. This is often seen as toughness and is an important part of football culture, which values playing through pain.

O’Connor writes that this attitude goes back more than a century. As Teddy Roosevelt once reportedly said, “risk of injury was worthwhile because football, when played honestly, cultivated important masculine qualities.”

These qualities still define football. The game is about team spirit and grit, and it can bring people together as a community – although violent fights among fans during and after Sunday’s game between the San Francisco 49ers and Las Vegas Raiders left several fans seriously injured and two in the hospital, revealing what San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ann Killion called the “worst, nastiest underbelly of the shared sports experience.”

O’Connor points out that when fans focus on what they love about football, it’s easy to overlook its physical and mental costs. People might criticize the hardest hits or worry about CTE’s long-term effects, but they still watch and buy merchandise, supporting a game built on violence.