The NFL and the NFL Players Association have approved a position-specific helmet design for the first time since they began regulating the team for players, representatives of both groups confirmed Tuesday.
The helmet, known as the VICIS ZERO2-R TRENCH, was built for offensive and defensive liners and ranks No. 2 in the 2021 league safety ranking. The helmets are equipped with bumpers on the front and top sides, where NFL engineering studies show they are a common point of contact for liners that absorb the causative contact of concussions, according to Dr. Ann Good, a senior BioCore engineer and NFL consultant.
The league and union have been classifying helmets based on proprietary safety data since 2015, using lab tests designed by BioCore, and began banning helmets with lower performance in 2019. The main goal was to reduce total concussions. reported among players, which peaked at 281 during the 2017 season. The 2021 ratings, distributed Tuesday to teams, added three models to the banned list and six to a category called “not recommended”.
Approximately 18% of players finished the 2020 season with one of these nine helmet models. But Dr. Kristy Arbogast, an NFLPA engineering consultant, said her expectation is that almost everyone will move to a better-performing helmet by 2021. In each of the last two seasons, 99% of NFL players they have used a helmet. recommended by NFL / NFLPA rankings.
The NFL has not released its full shock data from last season. But Jennifer Langton, the league’s senior vice president of safety and health innovation, said the concussion rates reported in the last three seasons (2018-2020) are 25% lower than in the previous three seasons (2015). -17).
“With these results,” Arbogast said, “we were able to demonstrate [to players] that the use of a laboratory test to classify helmets and ban helmets was relevant [players’] gaming experience. We proved it by climbing the [ranking], players could play an active role in their safety “.
It remains to be seen how many liners will switch to the model built for them this season, but it is the first step in the NFL’s goal of spurring manufacturers to produce models for each group of positions. Dr. Jeff Crandall, chairman of the NFL engineering committee and co-founder of BioCore, said there has been some “benchmark testing” of models designed for quarterbacks. A model for future seasons is likely to be finalized, possibly in 2022, once the analysis of the new technology the NFL adopts for coach-to-quarterback communications is done.