The most and least injured teams in the NFL

Injuries are unavoidable when it comes to the NFL, but some teams are in a much worse place after three weeks than their compatriots. Whether it’s a series of nagging injuries to starters or catastrophic season-ending events, there are some teams around the league that can legitimately say that they’re struggling right now due to injuries.

We’ve compiled the Injured Reserve (IR) data for all 32 teams, delineating between players who are on temporary IR and can return later in the season, and those who are done for the year. The one area this chart doesn’t track is the significance of specific injuries as it relates to team success. It goes without saying that Micah Parsons missing the first part of the season, or Jaxson Dart being out for the year, damages the Packers and Giants a lot more than a late-round pick who got injured in camp, but this at least paints in broad strokes to show which teams are ailing the most through three weeks, and who is relatively injury-free.

There’s one team here that wrecks the curve: The San Francisco 49ers. They are the league’s injury leader once again and have so many hurt players that they have maxed out their allotment of players on IR who are eligible to return. This means they are carrying injured players on their main 53-man roster, which extends beyond their IR listing. The Carolina Panthers also maxed their temporary IR allotment on Wednesday with cornerbacks Jaycee Horn and Mike Jackson, but thus far they haven’t reported any additional temporary injuries.

The +/- column represents the number of injuries over the league average for each team. Positive is worse, meaning teams are more injured than their peers; negative is better, meaning the team is healthier than average.