GWINNETT COUNTY, Ga. — Turkey and football are two of Thanksgiving’s biggest traditions. But as teams across America take the field this holiday weekend, the sport is tackling growing concerns about player safety with a big focus on concussions.
Football practice at Lanier High School looks a little different his year.
“You’ve seen it in colleges and in the pros. And I think nowadays we’re always looking for different ways to help protect our kids,” head coach Tyler Maloof told CNN’s Michael Yoshida.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Enter padded covers like the Guardian cap, which slips over a player’s helmet with the goal of adding an extra layer or protection.
The NFL has embraced the technology. This season, for the first time, players are allowed to wear the caps during regular season games.
The league began requiring them in 2022 for most players during certain practices.
“We saw a decrease in concussions of about 50% from the affected position groups,” said Jeff Miller, NFL executive vice president. The NFL has not released data behind its claims.
Guardian Sports, which makes the caps, points to its own testing as well as years of use by college and professional players as proof the padded coverings reduce injuries with one caveat.
“We don’t like to use concussion as a metric of what the Guardian Cap does or doesn’t do,” said Jake Hanson with Guardian Sports. “What we know is that the Guardian Cap does is it reduces those non-concussive blows.”
TRENDING STORIES:
- How did Kirk Cousins spend part of his bye week? Singing along to “Wicked”
- Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade: Jonesboro marching band puts on a majestic performance
- SEC Championship Game 2024: Who will Georgia play, when is it, how to watch on Channel 2
Several groups of independent researchers recently tested Guardian caps in the lab and on the field. The results have been mixed.
Some studies found small benefits in reducing impacts to the head and brain. But others showed no positive difference between players wearing caps and those who don’t.
“There’s no helmet right now, there’s no helmet add-on that can eliminate concussion risk... and more work needs to be done on those repeated sub concussive blows or the lower velocity impacts that our younger athletes are exposed to,” said Nicholas Cecchi, author of Stanford University study on Guardian caps.
That’s important because mounting scientific evidence shows repeated hits to the head, even if they don’t cause concussions, can have lasting impacts on the brain, like chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE.
[SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
“The mystery of CTE is starting to disappear in football. We’re figuring out why people are getting it and it’s essentially a math problem. It’s the number of hits and the strength of the hits that someone takes over their lifetime. So, the best analogy is probably smoking and lung cancer, the more cigarettes, the longer you do, the greater your risk,” said Chris Nowinski with Concussion Legacy Foundation.
Concerns are having an impact on the sport as leagues and teams change rules and try new technologies in attempts to make the game safer.
“My mom, she loves it. She’s been seeing them, she’s been talking about, uh, extra protection and safety since I was little,” Lanier running back Tojuan Peyton Jr. said.
“Football’s changed a lot in the last 10-15 years and how you practice and what happens because of all the safety concerns,” Maloof said.