NFL challenges innovators to enhance helmet facemask design to reduce concussions
The NFL is challenging innovators to improve the facemask on football helmets to reduce concussions in the game, reports BritPanorama.
During an innovation summit for the Super Bowl, the league announced the next phase of its HealthTECH Challenge series, aimed at accelerating advancements in helmet safety and player protection standards. This crowdsourced competition invites inventors, engineers, startups, academics, and established companies to enhance impact protection and design aspects of football helmets, particularly focusing on how facemasks can better absorb and mitigate contact effects.
Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president overseeing player health and safety, stated, “We’re trying to get this out through all the channels we typically do to try to engage, not necessarily the helmet industry alone, but engineers, engineering schools, people involved in material science and others. They might have different ideas around architecture, might have different ideas around materials. Participate in this, make your ideas win a prize. I hope, like we’ve done in the past, that this is going to advance the thinking.”
Progress in helmet safety traditionally stems from enhancements to the shell and padding, yet the facemask design has largely remained unchanged. Recent NFL data indicates that 44% of in-game concussions resulted from impacts to the facemask, a significant increase from 29% in 2015. As Miller pointed out, “What we haven’t seen over that period of time are any changes of any note to the facemask. As a football fan, if you look back five or seven years ago, it looks exactly the same as it was before.”
Despite innovations in helmet technology, hits to the facemask are now responsible for a greater proportion of concussions, prompting this renewed focus on redesign. “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,” Miller added.
Veteran defensive lineman Arik Armstead expressed support for the initiative, noting that he recently switched to a helmet model deemed safer by testing. Armstead remarked, “This is awesome. I think a lot is happening in our approach to improving these things. A challenge like this is amazing because you’re bringing solicited, new creative minds into the process.”
Winners of the challenge will be awarded up to $100,000 in aggregate funding and will receive expert development support to help transition their concepts from the lab to the field. The NFL plans to select a winner by August, with the expectation that helmet manufacturers will start integrating any viable improvements into production soon thereafter.
The NFL’s proactive approach underscores an evolving understanding of safety in sports, emphasizing the importance of innovation and collaboration across disciplines to tackle pressing health concerns head-on.
