Are you ready for some…chiropractic? NFL players certainly are!

Are you ready for some…chiropractic? NFL players certainly are!

Are you ready for some football?

That’s going to be the battle cry coming out of stadiums, bars, and living rooms across the country, as the National Football League season kicks off shortly, raging on until someone is named Super Bowl Champion in February.

While that’s a long, action-packed and entertaining season for fans, it’s an even longer season for players, whose Sunday (and Monday night; Thursday; sometimes Saturday, etc.) battles are so physically taxing, the toll on their bodies is like they’ve been in multiple car crashes every single game.

So, it’s no wonder that NFL players, coaches, and teams have long used chiropractic care as a way to keep their multi-million-dollar athletes on the field and at top performance. In fact, all 32 national football teams (yes, even the Raiders!) employ Doctors of Chiropractic, both during the long grind of the week to prepare athletes and treat injuries, and during game days as a means of triage.

It’s a ringing endorsement that NFL athletes – at the peak of physical perfection and playing the most violent sport on earth – believe so deeply in chiropractic. To celebrate that perfect union, here are 25 facts about chiropractic care in the NFL:

We’d be remiss to start a blog about NFL football without talking about the hard hits and highlight-worthy tackles. In fact, each game, most NFL players are involved with dozens (if not scores!) of violent collisions and hits. For some players (like those that play running back), the hits are akin to being in a car crash.

In fact, when Sports Science measured the force of the average NFL tackle, they found that a solid hit routinely delivered 8.5 tons of force or more to the ball carrier. For purposes of comparison, if you crashed into a wall or another car at 30 mph (with your seatbelt on), the impact would deliver 2.4 to 12 tons of force!

With all of these bone-jarring tackles, it’s no surprise that according to Chiropractic Economics, the average NFL chiropractor administers 30 to 50 treatments per week during the season but that just begins to describe the workload.

Players go through vigorous offseason workouts, combines, training camp, preseason games, the grind of 16 regular season games with only one week off, and then the playoffs, Super Bowl, and Pro Bowl if they’re lucky.

On average, NFL teams report over 4,000 injuries and 100 concussions every year. It’s estimated that over the 120-day (or so) course of a typical season, the NFL’s Doctors of Chiropractic perform anywhere from 16,320 to 27,200 adjustments and treatments!

With the amount of money hinging on each season, each game, and each play, teams and their training staffs will look for any advantage – including chiropractic. Just about every NFL team is worth a billion dollars these days, and some, like the Dallas Cowboys, are worth several billion! Each season, team owners invest anywhere from $136 million to $170 million in player salaries – and that number climbs every year.

Keeping their players on the field is paramount, but teams and owners have even more riding on a small number of players (like quarterbacks). Consider that at least six teams will commit 50 percent or more of their total payroll to their top ten players this season, and you can see how vital chiropractic care is!
Players are just as motivated to perform well with the help of chiropractic, wishing to extend their careers as long as possible. In fact, the average career in the NFL is only about 3.5 to 5 years. What’s worse, contracts are not fully guaranteed if they get injured.

At least 75 percent of all professional athletes – and even more NFL players- suffer from back pain each year, a condition that’s wise to first treat with chiropractic instead of immediately opting for pain meds or surgery.

According to a survey of athletic trainers in the NFL, 61 percent of NFL athletes seek chiropractic care for lower back pain, 31 percent for “stingers” and “burners” that come from neck injuries, and 8 percent suffer headaches or migraine.

Other common injuries that NFL players suffer include various muscle pulls and tears, whiplash, and dislocations. Over the long-term, NFL players report experiencing chronic conditions such as temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dysfunction and carpal tunnel misalignment, which are all typically treatable by chiropractors.

But it wasn’t always that way, as the NFL of the not-so-distant past (even well into the 1990s) perpetuated a culture of masking injuries with painkillers and short-term fixes like anesthetics and cortisone shots, allowing players to perform for one more down, one more quarter, or one more game, but effectively crippling too many of them.

Of course, concussions are one of the most problematic conditions among NFL players. It’s also a lightning rod topic, with the NFL Players Union suing the league a few years ago amid a culture that swept medical research about concussions under the rug. But new studies are alarming in their findings, such as the fact that one in three NFL players studies suffer brain injuries due to concussions.

Team chiropractors are now considered crucial for identifying concussions among NFL players and helping to treat the symptoms, such as attention deficit, dizziness, visual dysfunction, delayed reaction time, depression and sleep troubles.

Without the epidemic of opioid painkiller addiction in the U.S. today, teams also utilize chiropractors for safe and natural treatment alternatives, without prescriptions that sometimes just mask the pain.

In fact, chiropractic is now so important to the health and welfare of the players – and the game, itself, that a Professional Football Chiropractic Society (PFCS) exists, with a mission to promote the best practices for chiropractors who work with NFL teams and athletes.

There are plenty of examples of NFL players (as well as all-world athletes from every pro sport) who sing the praises of chiropractic for prolonging and aiding their careers. But two notable chiropractic advocates are NFL greats Jerry Rice and Michael Strahan.

Strahan shared his praise for chiropractic care during his post-playing media gig on ABC’s “Live with Kelly and Michael,” and Rice, considered the greatest wide receiver ever to catch a pass, is now the spokesperson for the Foundation of Chiropractic Progress.