Published on in Vol 5 (2024)

Preprints (earlier versions) of this paper are available at https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/56040, first published .
Peer Review of “COVID-19 National Football League (NFL) Injury Analysis: Follow-Up Study”

Peer Review of “COVID-19 National Football League (NFL) Injury Analysis: Follow-Up Study”

Peer Review of “COVID-19 National Football League (NFL) Injury Analysis: Follow-Up Study”

Authors of this article:

­ Anonymous


This is the peer-review report for “COVID-19 National Football League (NFL) Injury Analysis: Follow-Up Study.”


General Comments

This paper [1] provides epidemiological data on injury incidences in the National Football League (NFL) before and after the COVID-19 lockdown. This paper has the potential to be clinically meaningful; however, it has major flaws that should be addressed before it is reconsidered.

Specific Comments

Major Comments
  1. The authors stated that “This is the first large scale opportunity to demonstrate the effects of these principles and how they are important to understanding injury epidemiology.” However, there are studies that have looked at the effect of COVID-19 on other sporting leagues, for example, Bundesliga, Major League Soccer (MLS), etc. All this has been published and should be cited.
  2. Can the authors please confirm or comment on the potential accuracy of this open data? What validity checks were employed to demonstrate that these data are accurate?
  3. How can the authors be sure that the increase in injuries was due to COVID-19?
  4. What is meant by injuries? Soft tissue injuries or concussions? Perhaps an analysis on time-loss injuries would be more beneficial and add value.

Conflicts of Interest

None declared.

  1. Puga TB, Schafer J, Thiel G, et al. COVID-19 National Football League (NFL) injury analysis: follow-up study. JMIRx Med. 2024;5:e45688. [CrossRef]


MLS: Major League Soccer
NFL: National Football League


Edited by Edward Meinert; This is a non–peer-reviewed article. submitted 03.01.24; accepted 03.01.24; published 13.02.24

Copyright

©Anonymous. Originally published in JMIRx Med (https://med.jmirx.org), 13.2.2024.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in JMIRx Med, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on https://med.jmirx.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.