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This is chart of injured players (including players playing with injuries) by week.
The orange line is new weekly injuries (week 1 is skewed bc it includes offseason, training camp, and preseason)
The blue line shows the cumulative injuries over time.
Supringly, players don't really seem to suffer injuries at a higher rate as the season goes on. But the one injury that does increase is concussions, which is the most concerning type IMO. I take the toll that this game takes on player's brains much more seriously than I do towards their bodies.
And the cumulative injuries are only going to rise as we add more games. I get they are removing a preseason game, but starters don't play all that much in preseason.
In 2019, the percent of snaps the average starter played in preseason games was 13.8% compared to 81.3% in regular season games.
Based on these numbers we can roughly predict that by switching out a preason for regular season game that 23.9% of the league will be injured in week 18. As opposed to it being 23.4% in the final week of the current 17 week schedule. That might not seem like a big difference, but that extra 0.5% could include some key starters and big names.
I'm not a fan. I don't think it is good for the player's health. And I care more about the quality of the playoffs than I do one extra regular season game.