Late in his staff’s recreation towards the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight finish Kylen Granson caught a brief go over the center of the area, charged ahead, and lowered his physique to brace for contact. The aspect of his helmet smacked the face masks of linebacker Quay Walker, and the again of it whacked the floor as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his ft after the 9-yard acquire, Granson tossed the soccer to an official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the subsequent snap.
Aside from it being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this in any other case atypical play was solely noteworthy as a result of of what Granson was carrying at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protecting helmet protecting referred to as a Guardian Cap.
Already obligatory for many positions in any respect NFL preseason practices, in addition to regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these tender shells acquired one other vote of confidence this yr when the league greenlit them for elective recreation use, citing a roughly 50 % drop in coaching camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. Through six weeks of motion this fall, solely 10 NFL gamers had truly taken the area with one on, in accordance with a league spokesperson. But the determination was simple for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself coated by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts emblem to simulate the design of the helmet beneath—in preseason video games earlier than committing to put on it for actual.
“I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect anything for me,” the 26-year-old advised WIRED a few days earlier than going through the Packers in week two. “I thought, even if it looks kind of silly, it’s worth it.”
There is not any ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s dad or mum firm, Guardian Sports, even has employees T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”
It may be robust to sq. the actuality that the obvious future of soccer headgear resembles one thing out of a ’60s-era sci-fi film. But the undeniable fact that Guardian Caps are actually allowed in any respect in video games in the NFL—a league recognized for policing each inch of participant gear to guard its picture—doesn’t simply converse to their lab-tested utility (even when revealed, peer-reviewed on-field knowledge stays missing). It additionally displays the urgency of the second for soccer at massive.
The risks of strapping on a helmet have by no means been clearer, given the hyperlink between repeated blows to the head—whether or not concussion-causing or not—and continual traumatic encephalopathy (in any other case often called CTE, a mind dysfunction related to cognitive points like melancholy and progressive dementia that may solely be recognized posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to search out solutions has grow to be quicker and extra profitable than ever, between the NFL’s funding of personal analysis efforts and a quickly innovating soccer headgear business.
And at the heart of all of it, on the sport’s greatest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop store that, lower than a decade and a half in the past, was struggling to search out a foothold in soccer as something however a joke.