In the aftermath of Tua Tagovailoa’s horrifying concussion on Thursday Night Football, the NFL has taken child steps to forestall one other woozy participant from bypassing the concussion protocol. Tagovailoa’s fingers and arms caught in the fencing response was one in all the most indelible photographs since Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s leg on Monday Night Football.
The NFL is getting comfortable. You hear all of it the time from followers who lengthy for the barbaric days of “Jacked Up.” But that hasn’t utilized to their hard-shell helmets. Tagovailoa’s harm ought to solely speed up the NFL’s transition to Guardian Caps as the mandated in-game headwear.
This offseason, the NFL mandated Guardian Caps be worn by all offensive linemen, defensive linemen, tight ends, linebackers, and tight ends between the begin of coaching camp and the second preseason sport. And whereas there have been considerations that gamers could be extra prepared to make use of their helmets on tackles in apply, nevertheless, the common variety of concussions amongst these place teams dropped from 23 over the earlier three-year interval to 11 in 2022. Of these 11 concussions, six stemmed from a blow to the face masks, which clearly lacks added safety.
Between that info and the NFL’s concentrate on mitigating concussions, the subsequent step is obvious. The Guardian Caps have to be phased in as headwear for stay video games as properly. There can be resistance. We’ve seen how a lot combat gamers have put as much as keep away from making transitions to minor modifications in helmet designs. Three years in the past, a couple of gamers threw suits over their most popular helmet fashions being discontinued. The Guardian Caps could be the most drastic change since professional soccer changed leather-based helmets with the comparatively primitive protecting helmets with a facemask in the Nineteen Fifties.
From a business and aesthetic perspective, the helmets are displeasing. The comfortable shell over helmets composed of closed cell polyurethane foam, would make NFL gamers’ heads look much less like the bobblehead dolls they’ve resembled for half a century or extra like Toad the Mushroom. Regular-sized helmets and mini-helmets with league logos emblazoned on them are extraordinarily widespread memorabilia for autograph seekers. Would the NFL be prepared to intrude with that income stream throughout a 12 months by which they lastly permitted alternate helmet designs for all 32 groups?
G/O Media might get a fee
The NFL has come up to now, however they should make the further step. Think of this as the NFL’s equal to the period in automotive security requirements when airbags grew to become mandatory 30 years after seat belts. And there was a time when baseball gamers didn’t put on helmets, and when that was mandated, gamers didn’t have to make use of earflaps till many years later. The identical goes with hockey gamers having to put on helmets, after which finally visors have been added.
Every 12 months, the NFL performs laboratory exams on helmet fashions which can be derivatives of the identical design. There are a couple of obstacles akin to having the Guardian Cap information on concussions peer-reviewed by somebody with extra technical experience than Robert Saleh.
The NFL should reply whether or not the added weight, the grip of the polyurethane foam, and the friction it creates may trigger a rise in neck and spinal accidents, which might be a pricey tradeoff. Having a comfortable and uneven floor means when two helmets hit they don’t slide off of one another easily, creating torque on the neck. This would most likely clarify why skill-position gamers on offense and protection weren’t required to put on the caps.
The NFL shouldn’t let these helmets go by the wayside ala ProfessionalCap helmets. The padded attachments have been worn in the 90s by Buffalo Bills security Mark Kelso and 49ers lineman Steve Wallace who swore by their effectiveness. The bulbous look was mocked and by no means caught on, however Ben Straus the engineer behind the ProfessionalCap just lately labored with Johns Hopkins University on an Anti-Rotational Kinematic (ARK) helmet idea in 2018 that sought to mitigate the glancing blows that trigger concussions.
There is a lot extra the NFL can do to forestall concussive blows. The NFL appoints biomechanical engineers yearly who design and experiment helmets like the ARK or Guardian Caps. Many of them go nowhere, however this resolution is true in entrance of them. Mandating gamers to put on Guardian Caps is the least they’ll do.
Discussion about this post