NFL Practice Injuries by Team (2016–2025): Where the Bills Rank

Injuries happen every week in the NFL. On the field and in practice, or while training. Injuries are going to happen, but some variables can be accounted for to reduce the incidence of injuries or the severity. 

Back in December 2025, I looked at the Bills’ practice injury history due to what was perceived to be a spike in practice injuries. Over time, we saw a wide variety of practice injury rates from year to year, showing some that there were more injuries recently, but was that dumb luck or a trend? If you’d like to read the original article, click below.

Some of the more notable ones in 2025 that really impacted the Bills were when Ed Oliver missed four games at the beginning of the season due to someone stepping on his ankle in practice. Or when Christian Benford went down with a groin injury later in the season. Or worst yet was when Dalton Kincaid aggravated his PCL sprain while rehabbing a hamstring injury. It always seemed like these injuries came at the most inopportune time. 

Either way, that discussion led to looking at the same patterns league-wide over the last 10 years. These results are quite surprising and paint a much fuller picture of not only how the Bills look with additional data, but also how they compare league-wide and what teams have bigger issues. 

Methodology

-Data covers NFL Practice Reports from 2016–2025, including the postseason, drawn from multiple publicly available sources. AI tools assisted with formatting, analysis, and visualization. This data was curated as part of my partnership with Spartera in creating my injury database.

-A practice injury was counted when a player who had no designation at the start of the week was added to the report mid-week, or when a player who was full or limited on the first day of practice showed a downgrade over the remaining days. Game-day designation was not a factor in inclusion or exclusion. Each instance on the report was counted individually, meaning a player who suffered multiple practice injuries in a season would be counted more than once.

-The following were excluded: 

• veteran rest, illness, and personal designations.
• cases where a mid-week downgrade was followed by no designation on the final day, suggesting a rest day rather than an injury.
• players who showed the same pattern across multiple weeks in a season. 
• Preseason data was also excluded, as official practice reports are not published during that period.

Some gray areas do exist with limitations on publicly available participation data, this doesn’t always tell the full story but tracking participation changes week-to-week allowed for a consistent standard across the timeframe. 

Results

Over 10 years, there were 4,246 practice injuries in the NFL. The total injury report designations were 55,608, with 5,842 being some type of rest designation, leaving the total number of practice report data points at 49,716. 

This leaves the total number of practice injuries that account for total injuries at 8.5 percent. 

Looking at the chart, there are several immediate takeaways from the data. Over 10 years, Tennessee and Seattle were the only teams to top 200 practice injuries. Las Vegas, Miami, and Philadelphia were the only ones to have fewer than 100 over that same period. 

Looking at individual years, the 2021 Tennessee Titans had the most practice injuries in a single year at 45, followed by the 2018 Indianapolis Colts at 38, followed by the 2022 Titans at 36.

The least amount in a given season was the 2019 Los Angeles Rams with 1, followed by the 2018 Los Angeles Rams at 2 followed by the 2018 Buffalo Bills at 3.

As you can see, there is a wide variety of practice injuries from year-to-year and even week-to-week. I don’t have a hypothesis why some years are so low and others are so high. 

Injuries break down pretty evenly on either side of the ball with a more specific breakdown based on position. Defensive back is a combination between cornerback and safety which is why it is such a higher number. The positions that require more agility do get injured in practice more often according to the percentages. However, it’s noteworthy that offensive lineman are the second highest position injured in practice. I don’t have an explanation why that is the case.

Injuries that break down by type aren’t too surprising as the literature shows that knee and hamstring injuries are the most common. This just reinforces what we expect to see injury wise.

Finally, there are no real differences between practice injury frequency by week. It’s a pretty even distribution. It’s not really a surprise that the playoffs have the lowest injury rates as the teams are simply trying to be physically ready through rest. 

Buffalo Bills Injuries

Looking at the Buffalo Bills, their volume did change slightly from 91 practice injuries in the original analysis to 101, which did not change the overall average practice injuries of 10.1. That left them at fifth overall in terms of the fewest practice injuries over a 10-year period. I will add that these numbers are slightly different from what I had found in the first article, but in order to keep everything equal against other teams, we went with the updated numbers and added a year in 2016. If I had added in the 17 practice injuries from 2016, that would have brought it to 10.8 average injuries per year, still good for the top 10 least practice injuries by year.

Looking at practice injuries by year, the highest percentage of practice injuries compared to overall injuries was 10.58 percent in 2021, but that also saw the Bills have one of their healthier seasons with 104 reported injuries, whereas 2024 saw 267 reported injuries and 8 practice injuries, resulting in a 3 percent practice. That’s 3 more injuries in 2024 against 2021, but a notable difference in total volume.

Against the league, the worst the Bills ever were in total practice injuries was 4th in 2016, and the best in 2018 at 31st. In 2025, they were exactly average at 15th overall. That ranking varies widely simply due to the volume of injuries by year. 

The numbers above show how much of a variety there are in injuries during the practice week. Is this truly the reflection of practice injuries? That’s impossible to identify with publicly available data. The only entity that would have that information is the NFL with its injury surveillance database. 

Veteran Rest and Participation Downgrades

One of the limitations I found was how each team utilizes the practice report. There are standards in injury reporting, but there are different teams that utilize veteran rest as a designation whereas others will use an injury downgrade as a veteran rest day. It looks similar but interpreted differently without context. 

Looking at the veteran rest designation, the Baltimore Ravens used that designation 410 times over 10 years, whereas the Kansas City Chiefs only used it 52 times. 

Looking at the raw data, there were plenty more instances that I did not include that had a player with an injury designation that was full on a Wednesday, did not practice on Thursday, and was full on Friday. Did this signify a practice injury? I don’t believe so. I believe this was more of a veteran rest day. My observations saw this happen with players like Jason Pierre Paul, Rob Gronkowski, Terron Armstead, among many other older players. These types of players and patterns were excluded, especially if this happened week over week in a particular season. I’m sure there are instances where there were one-off weeks where this could not be confirmed. 

I also often observed some teams giving their veteran players off that Friday for weeks on end, or you saw a pattern by week where guys were limited that final day without a game day designation. I made an effort to include those unless there was a clear weekly pattern with a specific player. A practice injury may have occurred, but did not have to leave the player questionable or doubtful. Those were some of the most difficult patterns to identify whether to include or exclude. Thankfully, those with suspected practice injuries without a game day designation was a small sample size. 

Game Day Participation

Only 14.7 percent of the practice pattern injuries did not have a final game-day designation, which leaves 85.3 percent with some type of game day designation. 

Of those remaining 85.3 percent of players with a designation, 61.5 percent played, and 38.5 percent didn’t suit up. 

For the Buffalo Bills specifically, 53.4 percent of questionable players played, while 46.5 percent of questionable players were ruled out. This is slightly different from my original article of a near 50/50 split.

Of all of the doubtful players league wide, .43 percent played while 99.57 percent did not. This came out to one player suffering what was a practice injury, being listed as doubtful, and playing. This was DT Kawaan Short for the 2018 Carolina Panthers in Week 15.

This analysis is far from perfect, I recognize that. Some of these players may have had a walk-through the first day and later sought treatment the next day, leading to their addition on the injury report. Some may have missed a practice rep after being full the previous two days, but that would have led to a downgrade. Some teams simply report practice injuries differently. I can only go off of a player injury, their status each day that week, and the outcome. 

Takeaways

Looking at the league as a whole, the Bills continue to be one of the healthier teams when it comes to practice injuries by year. They have spikes in practice injuries year to year, like everyone else, but even the years where they have a lot of practice injuries, they don’t appear to be even close among the worst in terms of volume. 

Have the Bills been unlucky in terms of when a practice injury occurs? Absolutely. But the numbers above show that it happens around the league. These guys are practicing and playing a contact sport; injuries are inevitable. 

Practice injuries are a thing, but we continue to see the majority of the injuries happen in games. The ultimate goal would be to eliminate serious injuries and reduce the less severe ones, but this is nearly impossible. Switching to grass fields, making sure the helmets are safe, wearing proper equipment, ensuring proper techniques, and training all contribute to health, but at the end of the day, guys are still crashing into each other at high speeds, and injuries are bound to happen.

Finally, one of the takeaways from Joe Brady being hired as head coach was that he had ideas to manage practices which could in turn reduce injuries. 

Having a new voice in charge may allow ideas that were previously suppressed to flourish or new approaches could take shape. I don’t expect practice injuries to suddenly disappear, but the proper preparation could lead to better recovery and less issues throughout the week. 

Despite all of this, the Buffalo Bills have had some of the fewest practice injuries over the last 10 years. It’s annoying that the team has injuries during the season while practicing, but they have them at a far lower rate than their counterparts based on the observed practice patterns.

With a retrospective look back at the Bills against the league, we can now have a better perspective as to what to expect for the Bills moving forward. Practice injuries will occur on average 10 instances/year for the Bills, but could increase or decrease based on a wide number of variables. 

This will be something interesting to continue to analyze now that there is some historical data. 

Top Photo Credit: Harry Scull Jr., Buffalo News