Are Guardian Caps the solution to football’s biggest problem?
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Over the first few weeks of the National Football League season, viewers may have noticed a select few players wearing helmets that looked a bit odd or clunky. That is due to the league’s new rule which allows players to wear Guardian Caps, that were priorly reserved for practice, in games. The caps add provided padding on top of the helmet in the hopes of reducing concussions league-wide.
Head injuries and their long-term effects are a pervasive problem for the NFL, and Guardian Caps are only part of the plan to be more proactive in concussion prevention. Changes to practice regimen, rule tweaks and even the creation of new helmets altogether have been introduced in the past few seasons.
It’s clear the league is taking more initiative to protect its players, but in the story of Guardian Caps the question remains: how effective are they?
The general public likely won’t know the true answer to that question until at least the end of the season, or even years down the line, but player testimony paints it in a positive light.
Take Kylen Granson, tight end for the Indianapolis Colts, for example. He was only on the field for 49% of offensive snaps last season, ranking lower than 40th in the league for his position, but Granson still suffered a concussion. His position naturally forces him into contact each time he steps on the field, and he knows what another concussion could do to him down the line.
“Anything I can do to mitigate any sort of brain injury or long-term health effects, that would be detrimental to me, takes precedence,” Granson said in a recent TikTok. “Not only is it the big hits you have to worry about, (but) it's the culmination of a bunch of little hits… adding a buffer system to that, no matter how small, even if it's not a massive increase (in protection) I feel like is a positive.”
Granson, who was one of a handful of players wearing the caps on opening weekend, also talked about how someday he wants to have kids. He doesn’t want his brain to be in such a bad shape that he can’t remember or enjoy the time he spends with them.
Given the fact that there were 219 concussions in the NFL last season, it becomes clear that any advances in prevention are helpful.
The NFL themselves released a report in September of 2022 that said the caps were resulting in a “more than 52% reduction in concussions” for those donning the new gear. 2022 was the year the league started mandating the padding for all offensive linemen, defensive linemen, tight ends and linebackers during preseason practice. Now it's mandatory for all positions, and optional for games.
While the league has continued to champion this substantial drop in concussions, independent research has suggested otherwise. Stanford Medicine published an article in March of 2023 that cast doubt into the Guardian Caps’ effectiveness.
The article, written by Mary Erickson, featured David Camarillo, Ph.D., and Nick Cecchi who was a graduate student at the time. They had conducted their own research on Guardian Caps, and flat out said that the NFL’s lacked any substance in the scientific community.
“While NFL officials are claiming that the cap has reduced the number of concussions in the preseason, Camarillo and Cecchi said they have not seen peer-reviewed studies showing that's the case,” Erickson wrote.
Their research, while limited in participants, showed evidence to the contrary for the NFL’s report.
“In the real-life football practices, the cap failed to show a significant reduction in the impact from blows that didn't cause concussion,” wrote Erickson. “Researchers believe such head banging, even in the absence of concussion, can contribute to the development of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).”
CTE is defined as a degenerative brain disease. It becomes a problem for those who have suffered repeated hits to the head. Football players, more than any other profession, are in danger of the disease developing later in life.
Connie Shears, Ph.D., professor emerita of psychology at Chapman, weighed in on what CTE actually does to a person’s brain in an email interview with The Panther.
“Long-term effects of multiple brain injuries may include both physical and mental fatigue, loss of temper, unbidden anger or frustration and sometimes memory impairment, loss of language comprehension and overall confusion,” she wrote.
Essentially, you don’t want to have this disease. The problem for the NFL is that players are suffering multiple brain injuries throughout their career. Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins, for instance, suffered a concussion in a recent game against the Buffalo Bills. It was the third of his career. He is only 26 years old.
Research conducted by Boston University School of Medicine in February of 2023 found CTE in 345 of the 376 former NFL players they studied. No matter how you slice it, that is a staggering number. How about the average person, though?
“For comparison, a 2018 Boston University study of 164 brains of men and women donated to the Framingham Heart Study found that only 1 of 164 (0.6 percent) had CTE,” the study said. “The lone CTE case was a former college football player.”
Back to the Guardian Caps. Anything to even potentially reduce the chance of a player getting a concussion is a positive, right?
Chapman’s own Pamela Gibbons, who has been the director of athletic training & sports medicine since 1998, has her own dilemma regarding the caps.
“There’s not enough research to say they are or are not effective,” Gibbons said. “I think that anytime you take a product that is designed to reduce head injuries, and you add something on top of that product, if those two products are not working together there’s a potential for some problems.”
According to Gibbons, only a handful of Chapman football players wear the caps during practice and the athletic training team focuses more on making sure each athlete’s helmet fits properly before the season.
Gibbons did make note of the fact that the cap is best used to protect positions where helmets clash each play, that the padding is good to protect the brain from sloshing around in the head. In her view, though, no equipment can fully stop head and neck injuries in the sport.
“There’s no helmet, there’s no cap, there’s no ‘thing’ that is going to prevent you from getting a concussion,” she said. “Helmets are designed to reduce impact type injuries, but you still have whiplash type injuries. The Guardian Cap isn’t going to resolve that issue.”
So, what is the solution? Gibbons said that at the professional and collegiate level, teams have reduced the number of days that they are hitting in practice. She also mentioned that players at those levels know the proper hitting techniques to avoid injury. But at the youth football level, where brains are developing and kids aren’t getting paid millions of dollars or receiving scholarships to play a dangerous game, is where a lot of problems arise.
“The training, or lack thereof, that coaches have at the youth level to be able to teach proper technique (is a problem),” Gibbons said. “If they’re not being taught proper technique, then when it comes to game time and in practice they’re not using proper technique that will protect them from (concussions).”
It is on organizers at all levels of football to ensure the current and future safety of their athletes. If a youth player doesn’t have the right coaching they could suffer a concussion at an early age, during the prime years of cognitive development. Perhaps later in their career they suffer another freak head injury and all of a sudden they are dangerously at risk for CTE. That is the vicious cycle that the sport is tirelessly working towards ending.
While the NFL’s in-game data for Guardian Caps doesn’t exist yet, it is clear that the padding alone won’t stop concussions. The NFL has changed the structure of their kickoff to reduce injuries, made targeting a players head and spear tackling illegal and have made their concussion protocol more rigorous to further the safety of players.
Shears, though, made her opinion on the best way to prevent concussions in football very clear.
“DO NOT PLAY SPORTS WHERE YOUR BRAIN IS AT RISK,” she wrote.
The NFL is trying to create lasting change to make its game safer. The number of head injuries fans see on screen each season is too high. So whether or not Guardian Caps are the savior for the sport, any help is welcome.