As the NFL heads into its most important games of the season, injury lists are getting longer, not shorter.Across the league, a bigger question keeps surfacing: Why are todays best-conditioned athletes still getting hurt?WATCH T HE WHOLE BROADCAST STORY HERE: NFL's injury era: Why are so many players getting hurt?It was a freak accident non-contact. My knee just caved in and just tore my ACL, said Derrek Bunkleman, a Drake University linebacker and De Pere High School alumnus.Before his college football career even began, Bunkleman tore his ACL while still at De Pere High School.I was devastated, Bunkleman said. I was like, How am I gonna come back from this?In todays professional athletes, experts say, we dont have a toughness problem... Its a physics problem.Weve put our emphasis on faster, quicker, more powerful, said Scotty Smith, Performance Coach and Owner of Synergy Sports Performance in Green Bay. But how do we control those things? So Ive always used that explanation of like we put the bigger engine in a nice car, but we dont address the tires and the brakes.And when that car has to stop, something has to give.As athletes get bigger and faster, non-contact injuries have become more common, according to the National Academy of Sports Medicine.In a non-contact ACL injury, the foot is planted, theres no contact, said Dr. Abbey DeBruin, an orthopedic surgeon at OSMS Green Bay. The tibia shifts forward on the femur. That pivoting motion puts strain on the ACL. In some cases, the force and the strain overcome what the ACL is able to endure, and thats when an ACL rupture can happen.Thats why experts say injury prevention today is more than just fixing whats broken. Its about managing workload and recovery.These guys arent getting the one-on-one attention you think that they are, Smith said. Theres just not enough people to go around.And even when injuries are repaired, timing matters.With an ACL reconstruction, the graft somewhere around the three to four month mark is probably actually at its weakest point, Dr. DeBruin said.Athletes are starting to feel a lot better and want to potentially be more involved in sport, but the graft is at a more vulnerable point for re-rupture. Dr. DeBruin says that oftentimes its 9 months or more before athletes are recovered enough to return to peak performance.As the NFL looks for its next edge, Dr. DeBruin and Smith say the teams that rethink how they protect their athletes may shape the future of the game.We grew up in this world that we think more is better, Smith said. And Im always under the assumption that more isnt better. Better is better.The question now isnt whether injuries are part of the game. Its how much of the game they have to be. ...read more read less