(NEXSTAR) — Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president overseeing player health and safety, said the league saw the least amount of concussions in 2024 since they began tracking the stat.
“We had the fewest concussions in the NFL this year we’ve ever had. Full stop,” Miller told Nexstar’s Jarrett Payton and Chris Hagan on Radio Row in New Orleans.
Innovations in helmet technology, along with other efforts from the league, have led to fewer injuries for players.
“We collect and examine all these concussions that happen on field and we examine them and we build lab testing to resemble what happens on field and we tell helmet manufacturers, build a helmet that does better in this test,” Miller said. “What’s amazing is that how it does in the lab, correlates with how it does on field.”
The data is an advantage for helmet manufacturers that they didn’t have in the past. It also allows them to create position-specific helmets.
“A lineman experiences the world very differently from a safety. They don’t necessarily get hit in the same place, don’t get hit at the same speed, but they get hit more frequently,” Miller said. “So the helmet manufacturers say, ‘with that information, I can provide more protection in the places where they have contact,’ and as a result, their injury rates have gone down.”
The addition of independent spotters and doctors gives a non-partisan view into who should be getting evaluated for head injuries. Miller said that at first, it was met with resistance from players, but now, the culture is changing.
“It’s really a culture of safety and I think the players have bought in so substantially that it makes a lot of this a lot more fluid than it used to be,” Miller said.
The 2024 season saw the debut of the NFL’s new kickoff rule, which was also aimed at limiting injuries.
“The injury rate on that play was four times a play from scrimmage. We had to do something,” Miller said. “We ended up with 330 more kicks returned and 12 percent fewer injuries. That’s pretty food for year one.”
Miller added that the league is also doing research on playing surfaces and adding consistency across all stadiums.
The NFL is providing manufacturers with data to help them build more consistent and safer surfaces.
