James Daniels of the Pittsburgh Steelers wears a Guardian Cap while making a block during the first quarter against the Atlanta Falcons at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on Sept. 8 in Atlanta.Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
If you watched NFL games on last Sunday’s opening weekend, you may have noticed a handful of players had oversized heads.
Five players – sprinkled across the Steelers, Patriots, Colts and Titans – were the first in NFL history to wear Guardian Caps in regular-season competition.
A Guardian Cap is a soft-shell foam covering with a waffle design that is worn over a player’s regular helmet and is designed to reduce impacts. The players wearing the caps covered them with a lycra-spandex wrap bearing the team’s helmet colour and logo.
On the company’s website, a Guardian Cap for NFL players – the NXT model – is listed at US$125.
NFL players hoping they can limit their risk of concussion in this violent contact sport aren’t the only ones wearing these lumpy-looking soft shells over their helmets. Many other players – in the CFL, NCAA, U Sports, even minor football – have worn them in practice and training camps. Some teams report a drop in the number of concussions sustained in practice since adopting them. Now many players are being given the choice to don these coverings in games. too.
The NFL has gradually mandated the caps in training camp and practices since 2022, at first only at high-contact positions – linemen, tight ends and linebackers – and later adding running backs, defensive backs and receivers. The league says the concussion rate in training sessions among those wearing caps was down about 50 per cent compared to the three-year average of not using the caps. They say their testing found having a Guardian Cap on the helmet reduced the force of contact by an average of 10 to 15 per cent.
For 2024, the NFL said players may also wear them in games.
The NFL’s chief medical officer, Allen Sills, called that 50-per-cent reduction “unexpected, but obviously a much-appreciated benefit of using the caps. He likens the caps to a seat belt or an airbag in a car crash. Those are good tools, but avoiding the crash would be better.
“It’s part of the strategy, but we can never talk solely about the caps and say that’s going to be the most important injury prevention,” the doctor said. “Our best prevention is to avoid contact to the head, and we want to make sure we’re spending significant time emphasizing rules, techniques and training that get the head out of the game.”
Jabrill Peppers of the New England Patriots wears a Guardian Cap as he warms up before the game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 8, in Cincinnati, Ohio.Dylan Buell/Getty Images
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy – CTE – is a brain disorder caused by repeated blows to the head, and found in several former NFL players. A group of 5,000 retired NFL players sued the league in 2013 for failing to protect them from head-related injuries. In a landmark 2015 settlement, the league promised to compensate former players who developed dementia and other brain diseases tied to concussions and awarded US$1.2-billion to more than 1,600 athletes. But a Washington Post investigation found the league saved millions by rejecting some payouts.
Football leagues – especially the NFL – have faced pressure to mitigate their players’ risks of brain injuries.
For the 2023 season, the CFL mandated use of Guardian Caps at high-contact positions in training camp and contact practices. Reporting a 42-per-cent drop in concussions sustained in camp, the CFL expanded the policy for 2024 to include more positions and permits any player to wear one in games.
Saskatchewan Roughriders running back Thomas Bertrand-Hudon became the first to wear one in a game on Aug. 16. He was returning after suffering a head injury earlier in the season and wanted the extra protection. No other CFL player has followed.
Some players have worried they will feel extra weight or heat. The game-day spandex cover designed in team colours streamlines a little of the mushroom-like look of the cap, but it’s undeniably bulky, and that’s the point. Some players feel goofy wearing it, but it’s not designed to be fashionable.
Comments on Bertrand-Hudon’s Instagram post after that game included thousands of likes, plenty of kudos and support from fans and even those who have experienced concussions themselves. It also prompted insults about “going soft,” “bubble wrapping,” ”looking like a bobblehead” or “having no drip.”
Kylen Granson, a tight end for the Indianapolis Colts and among the first players to wear the cap in a game, drew a range of reactions, too. The fourth-year NFL player explained his decision on social media, saying it doesn’t add any noticeable extra weight or negatively impact his play and that “there’s no amount of aesthetics that can outweigh what a [traumatic brain injury] can do to you.
“I’m getting married this year, I want to be able to remember my first dance, I want to remember my kids’ first steps,” Granson said on Instagram. “I’d rather look dumb than be dumb.”
Others to wear it in games last week were safety Rodney Thomas II of the Colts, New England Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers, Tennessee Titans tight end Josh Whyle and Pittsburgh Steelers guard James Daniels. Six players wore one in preseason games, including Indy’s star running back, Jonathan Taylor.
The Guardian Cap is not the only soft-shell helmet on the market, but it’s the most well-known, with all NFL and CFL teams as clients, plus more than 500 college programs, 5,000 high schools and more than 1,000 youth programs. They recently rolled out Guardian Caps that cover hockey and lacrosse helmets, too.
The Guardian Cap for football was developed in 2010 by Atlanta-based Guardian Innovations. Its founder and CEO, Erin Hanson, says their odd-looking product initially got laughed at or ignored during sports medical trade shows, until a team physician at the University of South Carolina vetted it and eventually became their first big client.
Word spread slowly to other colleges and high school football teams. In 2017 the Guardian Cap won the NFL’s HeadHealthTECH Challenge, so the league put money into testing it, and the company eventually won the NFL and CFL as clients.
Hanson said they are making game-day helmet covers for all 32 NFL teams, so more players could wear the cap in a game. The CFL has them, and NCAA clients want more covers, too.
Guardian Caps worn by younger football players weigh seven ounces. NFL players wear a heftier model, weighing 12.5 ounces. They are made of closed-cell foam so it doesn’t add weight if they get wet.
But do the soft helmet covers provide football players more protection from concussions than wearing the helmet alone? It’s clear that more independent research is needed. Engineers from the NFL and the NFL Players Association have tested some to see if they reduce impact, and there are some peer-reviewed studies, including from the NFL and another from Stanford University. They show varying effectiveness, depending on the model of helmets, the kind of impacts, and a player’s position.
Chris Nowinski, the outspoken former American football player and WWE wrestler who became a neuroscientist and founded the Concussion Legacy Foundation and Boston University’s CTE Center, says he wants to see more published research on the caps.
“But what’s good is that NFL players care enough about their long-term brain health that they are giving this a try,” Nowinski said in a video he posted to Instagram. “Because they don’t want concussions and they don’t want to develop CTE.”
Hanson says she expects the NFL to publish its research in a couple of months.
In Canada, the University of Victoria is researching the performance of the helmet coverings, in concert with the CFL.
“We hope that some of the research we’re doing and feedback the players are giving goes into more innovative helmet design,” said the CFL’s chief medical officer, Dhiren Naidu, an associate professor in the Faculty of Medicine at University of Alberta. Naidu also sits on a global committee of medical leaders from collision sports leagues, from hockey to rugby and lacrosse, who share research and best practices.
“If you look at the years from 2019 below till 2021 and above, we’ve had about a 32-per-cent reduction in overall concussions,” Naidu said of the CFL. “I think all these little things we’re doing and learning are helping, but we haven’t solved the problem yet. I would really like to get rid of those head-to-head tackles that happen.”
The growing interest in these coverings prompted Football Canada to release a statement this week to its teams and organizations across the country. The sport’s national body said it approves the use of the protective helmet covers in practices and games effective immediately, should a player wish to purchase and use one.
The football team at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ont., had already introduced the caps in practices last season for linemen, running backs and linebackers. They use a different brand on the market, ATech. Michael Faulds, the head coach, says his team suffered no concussions in practice last season after routinely suffering a few each year in that setting before using caps.
He said several U Sports teams use them in training but he’s yet to see one in a game. They don’t have those slick game day covers yet.
The London Beefeaters of the Canadian Junior Football League felt so strongly about adding soft-shell helmet-coverings for practices this year that they held a fundraiser to get the $5,000 needed to purchase 90 for their team. The coaches ordered ATech coverings, all in navy blue.
“It was a proud day when they arrived,” said Matt Snyder, head coach of the Beefeaters, a team of 18- to 22-year-olds who don’t make any money playing football. He said some of the kids were snapping photos wearing them and posting them on social media.
Use of the caps has trickled all the way down to some grassroots. The Quinte Skyhawks in Belleville, Ont., bought Guardian Caps for use in practice for some of its youth teams, and will extend it to all kids next season, adding that it also helps ease parents’ minds.
“You notice right away that practice sounds different,” said Skyhawks president Peter Gabriel. “You don’t hear that sound of helmets cracking any more.”