NFL issues significant call to action after high injury rates on special teams, officials say

The NFL has issued a significant call to action in response to disproportionately high injury rates on special teams, league officials said this week. Rule changes and new training requirements are among the possible solutions that NFL medical staffers and competition committee members will discuss in the coming weeks.

Concussions across all plays continued their downward trend from recent years, the league reported Monday as part of its annual health and safety meeting with reporters covering Super Bowl LVI. But the data showed that concussions are occurring with higher frequency on punts and kickoffs, despite a series of recent rule changes designed to make both safer.

One in six NFL concussions occurred this season on special teams, according to chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills, along with 30% of ACL tears and 29% of lower extremity muscle injuries. Those numbers require «our attention immediately» Sills said, because special teams only represent a 17% of plays in a typical NFL game.

Punts have surpassed kickoffs as the most injurious play in football, he added, but both have unacceptably elevated rates of injury. In one particularly notable play this season, the Green Bay Packers' Kylin Hill tore an ACL and the Arizona Cardinals' Jonathan Ward suffered a concussion when they collided during a kickoff return in Week 8.

The NFL redesigned the kickoff in 2018, outlawing most double-team blocks, eliminating the running starts of cover men and limiting the number of blockers who can line up near the returner. The NFL also eliminated most blindside blocks in 2019, a rule change it hoped would impact punts. But injuries on punts haven't really abated, and they have passed kickoffs in part because nearly 60% of all