HMN 2026: How Documented concussions in NFL players are linked to higher odds of arrest

Football is a lab for studying the many dimensions of head injury. From defensive backs running at the pace of a sprinter downhill into a 220-pound muscular running back at full speed, to 400-plus-pound linemen knocking heads nearly every play, the NFL is a breeding ground for concussive and subconcussive head injury exposure.

NFL players are also in the spotlight for their off-the-field events, including this summer, with some media questioning whether the NFL has a domestic violence epidemic on its hands. While both are heavily researched, there is little attempt to study the relationship between concussions and arrests in NFL players, with only two prior studies examining the link, both finding no association.

The study I conducted is an attempt to push for a more comprehensive look. I did so by asking a more answerable question. In the data that we have, are documented NFL concussions associated with arrest?

The findings are published in the journal Deviant Behavior.

Linking head injuries to arrest records

To probe this question, my co-authors and I built a dataset drawing from publicly available sources. We started by creating a sample of NFL players who played in at least one regular-season game between 2010 and 2020, which resulted in 6,201 players. Next, we pulled injury report data, creating a dataset of those who experienced concussions.

We then linked the two datasets into one running dataset of players that we followed through 2024. We separated concussions by requiring a gap of more than two weeks, before counting a new one, so we did not count a single lingering injury as several. Additionally, we restricted our definition of arrest to a booking-based arrest, meaning the arrest narrative had to show the player was booked, excluding cases of citation or detainment.

What we found, and what we didn’t

In our main analysis, players with a documented concussion were arrested more often than players who did not have one. The predicted probability of any arrest for players with no documented concussion was 5.2 percent compared to 7.6 percent for players who did have a concussion, an increase of two and a half percentage points.

This finding was statistically significant, but there is still an important distinction to be made. These data are correlational: players with concussions had higher rates of arrest, but that is not to say one causes the other. In our sensitivity analysis, concussions did not predict arrest, and for violent arrests, the pattern ran in the same direction but was not significant.

Why timing changes the story

The extent of a player’s head injury history is hard to capture. Most players who make it to the NFL have been playing at least since high school, with many playing since they were young. Head injury is also hard to define, and research on CTE has tied the degenerative disease to repetitive hits that do not generate the force of a concussion.

Thus, for our study, a “first documented NFL concussion” is a single frame from a film that began long before the pros. There is also a lot riding on these injuries going unreported: players want to stay available so they don’t lose playing time, a contract, or a roster spot, and coaches and owners want them on the field to win games.

So, while protocol improvements, including spotters, have been made, the concussions that do get documented are likely the more severe ones. Severe head injuries can immediately affect how a player processes emotions and uses executive control. So I don’t read our timing result as a reason to dismiss the question. I read it as a reason to ask it better. If we want more definitive answers, this work will start small and have to be built.

A health problem, not a discipline problem

For a sport built on repeated contact to the head, understanding how the brain changes after these hits, and how that affects behavior, is essential to grasping how it may shape one’s likelihood of arrest. When a player is arrested, the tendency is to treat it as a discipline problem. Yet our findings suggest there may be a health-related dimension as well.

Brain health, behavior, and justice-system contact can intersect in a population that is exposed to head injury. The question is more about player support than punishment.

Where the research goes from here

There is so much potential here, and so many variables left to understand. Do players from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds respond to head injury differently? Does cognitive reserve, the finding that people with greater reserve can hold off dementia even when the brain is just as compromised, buffer the damage here? Does the length of playing career change the risk?

We are in the infancy of this research, and one of my hopes is to make better data more accessible. We need to follow players across their whole lives, tracking how the position they played, how they recovered, and how prior legal system exposure shaped outcomes. A life-course picture is the only way we can move from an association to a body of empirical evidence.

At present, the need is for a redesign of player support. Most attention goes to the moment of injury and the concussion protocol that follows, but if a head injury can affect sleep and impulse for years, support needs to match this timeline. The league needs to commit to its players’ health while they play and after they retire; the resources are there.

The conduct policy could shift too, toward a more restorative lens that channels arrested players into therapy and individualized brain-health plans, working toward forgiveness rather than punishment alone. It would build monitoring and long-term care, instead of reacting after harm is already done.

Players give their bodies and brains to this game. The least the league and science can do is find the risks it actually poses, and build the support to meet them.

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