Injury Risk Management in the NFL
The NFL season kicks off in 10 days with a rematch of the Super Bowl. As a lifelong Chargers fan and 30-year student of sports analytics, I have watched decision making in the NFL improve over those three decades, but there is still plenty of “surface area” for the quants to attack.
Popular Moneyball-style research areas for the NFL have included 4th down decisions, two-point conversions, onside kicks, salary-cap optimization, draft value, game theory in play calling, and sources of home-field advantage.
One topic that has comparatively little publicly available research is injury-risk management.
On August 8, 1992, in a preseason game, Chargers starting quarterback John Friesz suffered a season-ending knee injury against the Cardinals.
On August 13, 2026, highly touted Cardinals rookie running back, Jeremiyah Love, suffered a high ankle sprain, which put in doubt his availability for the Cardinals’ season opener at the Chargers. This led to questions around his heavy workload in a meaningless game.
Preseason makes for an interesting laboratory to assess head coach philosophies around injury risk management.
In the final week of the 2026 NFL preseason, 22 of 32 teams held their starting quarterback out of the game entirely. The other 10 used their starting QB. The Chargers were one of the teams that chose to expose their quarterback to injury. Because approaches vary, it suggests this is an area ripe for possible exploitation.
Professional sports teams analyze load management, but there is a related concept that deserves more attention: usage management. Load management is about cumulative work. Usage management focuses on whether a particular injury-risk exposure is worth taking.
In the regular season, this question comes up in garbage time. Coaches could use live win-probability models to quantify garbage time as being the period following the attainment of a certain win threshold, say 98%, for either side. At that stage, key personnel would be pulled from the game.
The decision rule is straightforward: pull the starter when the marginal cost of injury exceeds the marginal benefit of keeping him in the game.
The marginal benefit would include variables like that player’s value over their replacement, the change in win probability given the game state, and softer topics like team morale and fan reaction.
The marginal cost due to injury would include the change in win probability for the remainder of the season, and possibly later seasons.
As an area for further inquiry, I put this at the top of the list for NFL analytics departments.
Just as in investing, good risk management is not about eliminating the downside but making sure you are compensated for whatever risk you are taking.
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