A Longitudinal Study in Trend Data to Determine If Athletic Injuries in the NFL Are Impacted by Coaching Styl

This quantitative, longitudinal, trend study using post hoc data from the National Football League (NFL) and Fox Sports is unique because it examines elite athletes (NFL players), the coaching styles that influence their performance (supportive, neutral and unsupportive), and the number and type of injuries sustained by these elite athletes being coached under one of these styles. This study provides valuable information not only the elite athletes being studied, but also to the athletic training, medical, and coaching staff members who are involved with the progress of an athlete's injury recovery process, as well as other professions interested in leadership, coaching style and injuries.;Data were extracted using Python from the 2013--2016 regular season game injury reports. The coaches were placed into the Coaching Behaviour Scale for Sports via what the researcher could find regarding their coaching behaviors for the competitive strategies, personal rapport and negative personal rapport sections. Data were analyzed using multivariate, correlation, means, and other statistical methods using SPSS 22 and 24.;Based on prior research, it was hypothesized that a) athletes on a team coached by a leader who is unsupportive will sustain more injuries than athletes coached by a supportive leader in the NFL; b) there would be a positive relationship between chronic injuries and the number of injuries on a team with a leader who has an unsupportive coaching style on an NFL team; and c) an unsupportive coaching style would correlate with number of injuries and duration of recovery a NFL athlete sustains while on a team with this style of coach. Based on the data analyses, there is a relationship between unsupportive coaching and a higher incidence of certain types of injuries. However, there were certain injury types that were not found to have a significant relationship with unsupportive coaches. Neutral coaches and supportive coaches had significantly fewer injuries in regular season games, compared with their unsupportive colleagues. Unsupportive coaches had more chronic injuries than supportive and neutral coaches as well. There are significant correlations between coaching style, injury type and occurrence in the NFL.