National Football League Launches Challenge to Improve Facemasks and Reduce Concussions (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0180759296
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/26/02/09/053208/national-football-league-launches-challenge-to-improve-facemasks-and-reduce-concussions
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/08/health/nfl-facemasks-concussions
> The league announced on Friday at an innovation summit for the Super Bowl the next round in the [2]HealthTECH Challenge series , a crowdsourced competition designed to accelerate the development of cutting-edge football helmets and new standards for player safety. The challenge invites inventors, engineers, startups, academic teams and established companies to improve the impact protection and design of football helmets through improvements to how facemasks absorb and reduce the effects of contact on the field...
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> Most progress on helmet safety has come from improvements to the shell and padding, helping to reduce the overall rate of concussions. Working with the helmet industry, the league has brought in position-specific helmets, with those for quarterbacks, for example, having more padding in the back after data showed most concussions for QBs came when the back of the head slammed to the turf. But the facemask has mostly remained the same. This past season, 44% of in-game concussions resulted from impact to the player's facemask, up from 29% in 2015, according to data gathered by the NFL. "What we haven't seen over that period of time are any changes of any note to the facemask," [said Jeff Miller, the NFL's executive vice president overseeing player health and safety]... "Now we see, given the changes in our concussion numbers and injuries to players, that as changes are made to the helmet, fewer and fewer concussions are caused by hits to the shell, and more and more concussions as a percentage are by hits to the facemask..."
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> Selected winners will receive up to $100,000 in aggregate funding, as well as expert development support to help move their concepts from the lab to the playing field.
Winners will be announced in August, according to the article, "and Miller said he expected helmet manufacturers to start implementing any improvements into helmets soon after that."
[1] https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-launches-challenge-to-improve-facemasks-and-reduce-concussions
[2] https://www.nfl.com/playerhealthandsafety/equipment-and-innovation/innovation-challenges/healthtech-challenge-ii-to-advance-helmet-safety
Right, right. (Score:4, Insightful)
The NFL has been pretending to care about concussions more or less as long as I can remember; and I'm north of 40 at this point. I suppose it's marginally less pathetic than their "no, of course constant head trauma has no neurological effect whatsoever" stance; but it's still desperately hard to take seriously.
Re: Right, right. (Score:3)
Felt the same way when they were milking the Pat Tilman tribute to death. Everything about the NFL is about preserving their image so they can make money.
Re: (Score:2)
It was never meant to be a game... Rollerball (1975 film). Player injuries were a given. I don't watch NFL but I have watched this movie several times.
Every month the plot becomes more and more believe able.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree, Rugby took it seriously, conducted research made changes, Player are taken off the field and giving medical checks for suspected concussion, tackles that were standard are now banned,
The NFL's we'll just ignore it and keep making money attitude has been disgraceful. The research from Rugby found that helmets make things worse because players see it as protection from concussions and do harder tackles.
Re: (Score:2)
> Player are taken off the field and giving medical checks for suspected concussion, tackles that were standard are now banned,
>
> The NFL's we'll just ignore it
The NFL has mandatory injury checks (including for concussion) and banned dangerous types of tackles also.
Re: Right, right. (Score:2)
Came here to say pretty much the same thing. They want to make billions of dollars from having 300+ lb men not only crashing into each other but learning to crash into each other the HARDEST! How cute that they try to pretend they care about the health of those men.
Evil kinetic energy (Score:3, Funny)
They should introduce speed limits of about 3mph. And switch from helmets to bowler hats.
Re: Evil kinetic energy (Score:2)
Knocking your heads aginst each other at 4.8 km/h can still give you a concussion, I think.
Helmet design (Score:1)
Helmets soft on the OUTSIDE have been well proven to be more effective.
Maybe change the rules also? (Score:2)
There's only so much you can do with helmets to make the game safer. Per TFS, I do see an opportunity with facemasks, if they can be made more shock-absorbing. But I wonder if such changes would just encourage more aggressive contact that nullifies the advantage. Rule-changes might be needed to keep that from happening.
Last year I remember watching the Grey Cup (the equivalent of the SuperBowl for Canadian football) and seeing several players wearing an additional padded cover over their helmets. It looked
Re: Maybe change the rules also? (Score:2)
Change to Eton Rules.
Re: (Score:2)
If I remember history of this one correctly, American Football didn't originally have the current head banging style of play, because helmets were initially not used at all, and when they came, they were primitive.
As protective gear got better, it led to goal oriented to athletes aimed at winning to play in ways that new protective gear enables them to play. I.e. better helmets = more banging heads together.
The one thing that will work is rule change. But rule changes always carry a risk of losing a lot of
How about disincentives to injure other players (Score:3)
There are lots of games that use an oval ball and don't wear helmets. All of those have made major moves over the last decades to reduce the likelihood of concussions by making certain moves illegal in the game, with significant penalties. Spear tackles, grabbing around the neck, dumping people head first, slamming the back of the head into the turf , etc.
So why doesn't American football do the same? Penalties can be percentage of salary, reduction of team salary caps, etc to take into account the ridiculous money involved esp. with some players.
Re: (Score:2)
> There are lots of games that use an oval ball and don't wear helmets. All of those have made major moves over the last decades to reduce the likelihood of concussions by making certain moves illegal in the game, with significant penalties. Spear tackles, grabbing around the neck, dumping people head first, slamming the back of the head into the turf, etc.
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> So why doesn't American football do the same?
What exactly are you talking about? All those things ("Spear tackles, grabbing around the neck, dumping
Let's just skip ahead to drone players (Score:2)
Every player is just remote controlling a robot, so any injuries are just remedied by spare parts up to and including the entire robot - no injuries to the player at all! The next step is to replace the players with AI. Super bowl 70 - OpenAI vs Anthropic!
Going in the wrong direction (Score:2)
If you want to reduce concussions, eliminate helmets. All that has been accomplished with helmet improvements is players use their heads increasingly as battering rams.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm thinking lots and lots of bubble wrap.
Re: (Score:2)
Me Chinese
Me play joke
Me put pee-pee in your Coke