An Analysis of the Association Between National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) Ratings and Player Injuries

Introduction Athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches are employed in professional football to prevent injuries and minimize the time players are sidelined due to injuries. Evaluating the effectiveness of athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches remains challenging due to the lack of standardized, objective metrics that accurately capture their impact on athlete performance and development. This study aims to assess the predictive value of the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) rankings for evaluating the effectiveness of athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches. Methods This study employed a cross-sectional ecological design. Data were collected from publicly available databases to quantify the total number of injuries sustained by players on each National Football League (NFL) team, the total number of weeks players missed due to injury on each team, and the overall rankings for each team’s athletic trainers and strength and conditioning coaches in the 2024-2025 NFL regular season. All data were collected, and Spearman's rank correlation coefficients were obtained. For each of the coefficients obtained, significance was determined based on a sample size (n) of 32 and a significance value (𝛂) of 0.05. Results Over the course of the 2024-2025 NFL season, there were a total of 1,149 players who missed at least one game due to injury during the regular season. This accounted for a total of 5,811 weeks missed. The league-wide averages for the number of players who missed a game due to injury and cumulative weeks missed due to injury were 36.097 and 183.645, respectively. NFLPA rankings for athletic trainers showed no meaningful correlation with players who missed a game due to injury (ρ = -0.030) and total weeks missed due to injury (ρ = -0.031). NFLPA rankings for strength and conditioning staff were weakly correlated with players who missed a game due to injury (ρ = -0.267) and total weeks missed due to injury (ρ = -0.238). Conclusion There was no significant correlation between the NFLPA rankings for athletic trainers or strength and conditioning coaches and the total number of injuries or total number of weeks missed for each team. While this information can be valuable for players to assess how much other players value their team's trainers and strength and conditioning staff, it offers little to no predictive value for the effectiveness of these programs in preventing injuries and minimizing time missed.