Is it my imagination, or are there more injuries in the modern NFL than there were 20 years ago or older? We use to call it a sprained knee, the guy wrapped it up and kept playing. The only thing that would drag a guy off the field was a broken bone. Hell, Ronnie Lott hacked off part of a finger so he could play. Are the players today softer, or is the league doing the right thing holding players out?

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I think if you look at this year, it might be the first of a trend with the reduced offseason load and year round conditioning. Players are human, and without a push through the offseason, they are not going to remain in peak physical conditioning. Then they try and come back and play a game at a pace of today with the size and speed ratio of today's athletes.

I think the players and union did themselves a disservice by cutting the offseason work load.

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For years, dirt was a magical tool used by coaches to keep players healthy. But as the world gets more into technology, and more they forgot about the world's inner magical forces. Now very few NFL teams, if any, have dirt underneath them to grab and rub with... now it's mostly just fake grass...

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I think some of it is the thought put into the longevity of the players. Is it better for the team to sit Nelson for a couple weeks to heal the Hammy, or have him play injured and risk losing him for longer or ever.

I also think most if the season ending injuries have less to do with lack of conditioning, and more to do with over conditioning. These guys don't take the offseason off. Most are constanlty working out to keep in shape so they only need to condition to game shape once camp starts.

Some things of the body can only take some much and working out can't help. Ligaments and tendons don't get stronger by working out. We see guys, tear ACL's by simply running. If that was a result of being out of shape, I wouldn't make it through a softball season. I don't tear them, because my bones, ligaments and tendons can take more than my out of shape body can produce.

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It is not just one thing.
1. Money. These guys get paid so much more than their forefathers it is ridiculous. Back in the 40's-70's they had to play so that they could get paid. And it was every down. Now they have all these situational substitutions many don't play much more than half the snaps.
2. Technology. Since they can diagnose the injuries better today than in antiquity they have a better understanding of what the injury is. In the 40's they would have said sprained knee instead of a torn ACL.
3. Legal system. With the lawsuits hanging over the NFL they want to make sure they come across as the Caring Corp.
4. Attitude. Kind of ties in with #1. If players have a good thing going they want to milk it for as long as they can. Sitting out the remainder of a year can lead to a longer career. Whereas playing with an injury could cause more harm and shorten a career. What would someone like Gale Sayers have been able to do with he had today's technology and not tried to play though some of his injuries?
5. Conditioning. Like Pack93 says the shorter training camp and shorter practice week may well have an impact on injuries.
6. Physical abilities. The players are bigger, stronger, faster today with better equipment. There is more opportunity for injury. I knew a guy who played for the 1970 Baltimore Colts. (I saw his super bowl ring.) Later he played a couple of years for the New England Patriots. He was a HB. I could not believe how small he was compared to the players in the 90's.
7. Dirt. I like the approach Beast has. Without natural fields they don't have dirt on the sidelines like they use to. Coupled with that is the plastic fields are not the same as the mud fields. But we all saw how upset NFL Inc was when GB hosted the NFC CG in the 90's with a muddy field. There is nothing wrong with a field that is more mud than grass in Dec and Jan. Other than the fact that it doesn't look pretty on tv. That and the players won't run as fast so there won't be as many injuries.

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I think the players of today are bigger, faster and stronger than those of yesteryear. More injuries are going to happen with those collisions. Figure, too, they wear far less padding today. The other consideration is the medical advancements in diagnosing injuries, and in healing injuries. A guy who may have had a career ending injury back in the day, gets repaired today and back onto the field, sometimes in the same season. Once back onto the field, they are less conditioned, yet having to take the hits of these same bigger, faster, stronger players.

I wonder if more teams will adopt that grass/turf hybrid GB was using, or still is?

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hard to say. At one time it seemed like many stadiums were moving this direction. I think Field Turf's current softer version that is not as hard on players has halted this move.

grass is still king.

15 stadiums have some kind of all natural grass surface. About half are listed as just plain old grass. 1 is KY Bluegrass. The rest are 419 Tifway Bermuda Grass.

13 have some kind of artificial turf. Field Turf leads the way these days with 7. Then a bunch of other brand name versions which I won't list. I find it interesting that New Orleans has had 3 different artificial surfaces since 2003. Of course Katrina was the culprit for this but what I find interesting is they did not keep the same brand name surface when they switched in 2006 and 2010.

3 stadiums have the Desso GrassMaster hybrid. I was curious to see because I thought more stadiums had a hybrid even if they used some other company's version of it. (I thought Field Turf was one of them but it doesn't appear to be when I read about it.) GrassMaster is huge in Europe on "Association Football" (Soccer) fields. There are 22 in England alone including Wembley.

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