By Christopher R. Deubert, Senior Writer
News sources (reputable and otherwise) as well as academic and other publications regularly state that the average career in the NFL is about three years (e.g., Associated Press, Wall St. Journal, Statista). These reports often derive from statements made by the NFL Players Association (see Reuters, Washington Post, ESPN, Fox Sports) and have become so ubiquitous as to have the appearance of settled fact. In reality, the articles are a circular loop of unreliable data.
The definitional questions
One of the earliest instances of this claim is found in a 2002 New York Times article summarizing a recent NFLPA report as follows: “The players union studied team rosters from the 1987 to 1996 seasons, an average of 1,647 players a year, or about 16,000 player years. The study showed the average career of an N.F.L. player is 3.3 years.”
The NFLPA has reiterated this claim over the years (e.g., in 2011 and 2026), without ever releasing any substantive explanation of its analysis. News reports then regurgitate these statements without examination.
Even putting aside the data’s age, there are several problems with the simplified characterizations of NFL playing careers, most of them definitional.
First, “average” is a vague term. We all remember (or should remember) the more specific statistical terminology of mean, median, and mode. While “average” is often understood to be the mean in everyday conversation, that is not always the case. Nor is it necessarily the most helpful or representative statistic, particularly without the context of the other two.
Second, who is an NFL player? The continuum here is harder than you might think ranging from: (a) an undrafted player who signs a contract but never makes the 53-man regular season roster; (b) a drafted player who signs a contract but never makes the 53-man regular season roster; (c) a practice squad player who never makes the 53-man roster; (d) a player who makes the 53-man roster but never makes the 46-man gameday roster; (e) a player who makes the 46-man gameday roster but never appears in a game; to (f) a player who makes the 46-man roster and appears in a game.
Third, what does it mean to play a year in the NFL? Here the NFL-NFLPA collective bargaining agreement has definitions potentially useful to this and the prior question.
Employment in the NFL has two important measuring sticks. A “Credited Season” is one in which a player “was on, or should have been on, full pay status for a total of three or more regular season games.” Importantly, the number of Credited Seasons is the benchmark used to determine eligibility for and compensation under various benefits programs.
Next, an “Accrued Season” is one in which a player “was on, or should have been on, full pay status for a total of six or more regular season games.” With some caveats not necessary for discussion here, players are typically on full pay status when they are on the 53-man regular season roster. Accrued Seasons are determinative of a player’s free agent rights – three provide a player with restricted free agency and four provide a player with unrestricted free agency (assuming their contracts are expired).
But which definition best represents what it means to play a year in the NFL? Neither the NFLPA nor any of the above news articles bothers to wrestle with any of these definitional questions.
With all of the above uncertainty said, the most egregious problem with the NFLPA’s analysis comes from the fact that it seemed to include in their calculation every player who ever signed a contract with an NFL club, regardless of whether they ever made the club’s regular season roster or played in an NFL regular season game, while also including players who were still active (and whose careers would thus exceed their current length).
As explained by the website Sharp Football Analysis, the NFLPA redid its analysis prior to the 2010 season and counted anyone who was drafted in 2010 but had not yet had a chance to play in a game as having a career of 0 seasons. At the time, those players made up 19.5% of the NFL player population. Further, the NFLPA counted players who had just finished their first season as having a 1-year career, players who just finished their third season as having a 2-year career, and so on.
The NFL’s response
In 2011, the NFL formulated a response to the oft-cited NFLPA figure. The league said that for “players who entered the NFL between 1993 and 2002, the average career length for a player who is on his club’s opening-day roster as a rookie is 6.0 years.” Notably, this calculation likely makes the same mistake as the NFLPA’s by cutting short some players’ careers.
Otherwise, the only substantial criticism of the NFL data today would be that it is dated.
A more objective examination by Sharp Football Analysis in 2011 found that players who were drafted between 2002 and 2007 have a mean NFL career length of 5.0 years. While this analysis too does not define a “year” of play, it is probably the most reliable statistic for measuring NFL player career length.
A perpetual fumble
Sports are awash in statistics, so it is somewhat amazing that no careful and reliable analysis of this question has been done. If there is one, neither I nor the regular reporters on the NFL have seen it. And yet both the NFL and NFLPA certainly possess the data to do such an analysis. The will thus appears lacking – particularly for the NFLPA, which has benefited from its perpetuation of bad math as a point of sympathy and bargaining leverage.
Deubert is Senior Counsel at Constangy, Brooks, Smith & Prophete LLP
