This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: New research from Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management finds that injury matters less in the NFL than is often assumed. With the exception of highly paid quarterbacks, losing players—even the high-dollar ones—to injury is not as fatal to a team's success as one might think.
"Ultimately, the NFL is a 'next man up' league, where non-stars fill the role of stars reasonably well. My research shows that the team of the injured player would not see a substantial change in its on-field success, the only exception being the highly paid quarterback," said Joel Shapiro, clinical associate professor of managerial economics and decision sciences and lead author of the study. The study, which was published in Sports Economics Review earlier this month, suggests that passing on a talented player because he's injury-prone, or paying heavily to replace an injured starter midseason, may cost more than the injury and recovery themselves.
The findings indicate spending money on depth may go further than spending money on durability. "Executives who want to build a winning team need to ask hard questions about their star players," Shapiro said. "If a backup can fill in for a few games without a lot of negative impact on winning, how much does the star really add?
Our research suggests the answer is 'less than their pay suggests.'" NFL teams spend exorbitant amounts of money on players when building out rosters. The injury risk of the potential players often factors into the contract decisions in the front office. Shapiro measured how much success a team gives up when a percentage of payroll is unavailable due to injury.
The study analyzed two primary data sources covering NFL regular seasons spanning from 2012 through 2022. The player-level data set contained 22,584 player-season observations across 6,235 unique players—linked to a specific team and season. The team-level data set contained seasonal win totals, games played, win percentage and playoff qualifications for all 32 franchises across the study period.
Shapiro introduced a new measuring tool to weigh the impact of injury on a team: Percent Cash Wasted (PCW), which is the share of payroll paid to players while they're injured. Using the data, Shapiro examined the relationship between PCW, team winning percentage and playoff qualification. He matched the players to their teams in each year to create a measure of PCW for each team for each year and then assessed how its PCW affected team success.
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