This is the third blog in a series that compares the muscle-to-bone ratio (MBR) of National League Football (NFL) players to NCAA Division I College Football players. The first blog (https://www.dexalytics.com/news/comparing-muscle-bone-ratio-college-nfl-football/) compared total and regional MBRs in a group of NFL players (n=346) to a group of college football players (n=553). Because our sample of athletes in both NFL and college football players is large, we decided to look at different offense and defense position groups in these two populations. The second blog in this series compares offensive position players (i.e., quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends, and offensive linemen). This third blog will compare defensive players (i.e., defensive linemen, defensive backs, linebackers, and punters/kickers). The data used for these three blogs is from research conducted in my laboratory [Dengel et al., 2023; Dengel et al., 2024]. If you are interested in a more detailed analysis of the data, I would suggest that you examine these two research articles.
Of the 553 college football players, 227 were defensive players. We compared these defensive players to the 176 NFL defensive players we studied. In looking at the figure below you will notice we plotted the defensive players by position groups (i.e., defensive linemen, defensive backs, linebackers, and punters/kickers). On all the plots, the NFL players are represented by the red bars and the college football players by the blue bars. For each position plot we have included the total MBR and the regional MBRs for the arms, legs and trunk. What you will notice is that with all the defensive position groups except linebackers, there were no significant differences in total MBR or the regional measures of arms, legs, and trunk MBRs. However, in the linebackers the arms MBR was significantly greater in the NFL than the college football players. The total , the legs and trunk MBRs were the same in NFL and college football linebackers. This data coupled with the previous blog using the data from these two papers [Dengel et al., 2023; Dengel et al., 2024] suggests that at the NCAA Division I level the football players are similar in total and regional MBRs compared to NFL football players. It might also mean that these ratios between muscle and bone are constant in NCAA Division I and NFL and can be used to evaluate college players for their readiness to compete in the NFL.
What does it all mean?
First, it is important to remember this is a new area of body composition analysis. Whether it is useful is yet to be determined. MBR may also be useful in evaluating players when they return from injury especially if mobilization was used in the rehabilitation process. However, this area of research still needs to be investigated. Clearly more research is needed on MBR and sports performance. In addition, the use of MBR should be explored in other sports to determine the usefulness of this new matrix.
REFERENCES
Dengel DR, Evanoff NG. Positional differences in muscle-to-bone ratio in National Football League Players. International Journal of Sports Medicine 44:720-727, 2023.
Dengel DR, Studee HR, Juckett WT, Bosch TA, Carbuhn AF, Stanforth PR, Evanoff NG: Muscle-to-bone ratio in NCAA division I collegiate football players by position. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research 38(9): 1607-1612, 2024.
About the Author
Donald Dengel, Ph.D., is a Professor in the School of Kinesiology at the University of Minnesota and is a co-founder of Dexalytics. He serves as the Director of the Laboratory of Integrative Human Physiology, which provides clinical vascular, metabolic, exercise and body composition testing for researchers across the University of Minnesota.