The NFL and NFLPA have approved a helmet designed to prevent quarterbacks from getting concussions, or at least reduce the occurrences.
According to a report from the Associated Press, the headgear is manufactured by Vicis and is supposed to reduce the chances of injury when a player’s head hits the ground. League data has revealed that around half of the concussions suffered by quarterbacks are a result of helmet-to-ground impact, which the new piece of equipment should help lessen.
The development comes on the back of Miami Dolphins QB Tua Tagovailoa suffering a series of worrying head injuries that ultimately saw him miss the end of the most recent NFL campaign. Tua’s concussion issues were serious enough to prompt speculation over the possibility of retirement. Reports also noted that the former Alabama star would be taking martial arts lessons in the offseason so he could learn how to fall without hurting himself.
“We’ve now analyzed with our engineers and with the Players Association more than 1,000 concussions on field, we have a pretty good database of how these injuries occur,” NFL executive Jeff Miller said to the AP. “This helmet performs better in laboratory testing than any helmets we have ever seen for those sorts of impacts.”
The new helmet is said to have performed seven percent better than the most popular helmet worn by QBs in 2022, per a league memo.
“The unique thing is that it has a deformal outer shell, which means when you take an impact in any location on that helmet, it will deform or basically dent in that location to absorb the impact,” Vicis exec Jason Neubauer explained.
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“What that means for us, as designers or engineers, as we’re looking to optimize it for different types of impacts, we’re able to change unique locations to try to optimize the impact mitigation in any one area.”
Neubauer also revealed that the company began designs on the Zero2 Matrix QB helmet early last year.
