The Average Weight of NFL Players

The table below uses the active rosters of the 2025 season and the weight each team listed for its players. Positions are sorted from the heaviest group to the lightest.

The two line positions are far ahead of everyone else. Offensive linemen average 315.2 pounds and defensive linemen 291.2 pounds, and 242 of the 257 offensive linemen, 94 percent, were listed at 300 pounds or more. Tight ends, long snappers and linebackers form the middle group at about 239 to 249 pounds. Quarterbacks, running backs and punters sit between 213 and 220 pounds, and wide receivers, defensive backs and kickers are the lightest, all under 200 pounds on average.

The league average of 243.7 pounds is a blend of those groups and does not describe any one position. Only linebackers, long snappers and tight ends land within about ten pounds of it. The spread inside a group can also be wide: the lightest running back on an active roster was listed at 183 pounds and the heaviest at 300 pounds, which is a range of 117 pounds within one position.

The average football player weight hides a split. The league has a large group of players above 300 pounds and a larger group below 250 pounds, and relatively few in between.

About 62 percent of players were listed under 250 pounds, and 21.7 percent, or 334 players, at 300 pounds or more. The heaviest listed weight was 370 pounds, an offensive lineman, and the lightest was 153 pounds, a wide receiver. Fifty-seven players were listed at 330 pounds or more and eight at 350 pounds or more. The most common single listed weight was 200 pounds, shared by 51 players, followed by 190 pounds with 50 players and 205 pounds with 47.

Between 1999 and 2025 the average weight of NFL players rose by a few pounds and then came back down. It was 243.7 pounds in 1999, peaked at 247.6 pounds in 2010 and stood at 243.7 pounds in 2025, the same as in 1999. The seasons in between stayed within a band of 3.9 pounds.

The roster tables record player status differently from one era to another, so the season averages are a rough guide to the trend and not an exact measurement. The shape is clear all the same: a rise through 2010, a fall since.

Looking at individual positions, offensive linemen are 7.9 pounds heavier than in 1999, defensive linemen 3.5 pounds heavier and wide receivers 2.9 pounds heavier. Running backs are 10.0 pounds lighter, tight ends 8.8 pounds lighter and linebackers 3.3 pounds lighter.

Kickers, punters and long snappers are left out of this comparison, because the 1999 table lists them under a single special-teams label. The changes are the differences between the rounded averages shown in the table.

The share of players at 300 pounds or more is the clearest way to see how the big-man positions have grown. The table counts the active players listed at 300 pounds or more in each season, with the share of that season's active roster and the share among offensive linemen.

In 1999 275 active players, 16.8 percent, were listed at 300 pounds or more. The share was highest in 2014, at 23.7 percent (402 players), and in 2025 it was 21.7 percent (334 players). Among offensive linemen the share at 300 pounds or more went from 72 percent in 1999 to 94 percent in 2025. The roster tables record player status differently from one era to another, so the counts for single seasons are a rough guide, and the share is more reliable than the number of players.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that the average weight of American men aged 20 and over is 199.0 pounds, based on measurements in a national survey conducted from August 2021 to August 2023. The average weight of an NFL player, 243.7 pounds, is 44.7 pounds above that figure.

The comparison depends on the position. Offensive linemen average 116.2 pounds above the national figure and defensive linemen 92.2 pounds above it. At the other end, wide receivers, defensive backs and kickers average slightly below it, by 1.0, 2.5 and 4.8 pounds. In all, 271 of the 1,537 active players, 17.6 percent, were listed below 199.0 pounds.

The comparison has a limit. The survey weighed people and the NFL numbers are the weights teams list for their players, and the two groups are different: one is a sample of the adult population and the other is professional athletes picked for football ability, which for some positions favors size. It shows how far the league sits above the population, not what a player has to weigh.

The figures on this page come from the rosters table of the nflverse project, an open data set of NFL players maintained on GitHub by the nflverse community. Each season has its own table of players, with the height and weight of each player and a status code.

The main figures use the 2025 season and count the players whose status in that season's table is active, which gives 1,537 players. Every one of them has a listed weight. Weights are whole pounds as listed by the teams, so they are not measurements taken for this page. The comparison over time uses the same rule for every season from 1999 to 2025, one row per player. A season still being played is left out.

The comparison with the general population uses the average weight of men aged 20 and over published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from the National Center for Health Statistics survey for August 2021 to August 2023.

The position averages for 2025 are available as a CSV file, and the yearly averages for 1999 to 2025 as a second CSV file. Weights are averaged over the seasons up to the date above, the end of the latest season in the data. More football pages are collected on the NFL hub, and the matching figures for height are on the page about the average height of an NFL player.