With the rightful focus on the NFL’s COVID-19 emergency protocols and comprehensive plans that the NFL and NFLPA are developing to keep players safe during this pandemic, it is easy to overlook the long-term health and safety testing the league annually undertakes. And no, it is not going on hiatus this season, though the pandemic is affecting the number of teams that may participate in certain safety tests.
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The league is expanding to as many as 24 teams that will have their cleats automatically tracked (compared to eight last year), and as many as 16 teams testing mouthguard sensors (up from four). And the NFL is pushing forward on developing helmets for specific positions, with some players possibly wearing them as soon as next season.
For the past several years, affixed to the wall of NFL locker rooms is a chart ranking helmets by safety, and the league now boasts that 100 percent of players are wearing helmets that pass NFL safety tests, with 99 percent of those in the top or best-performing category. The rankings have been developed after years of on-field injury data capture and laboratory testing. Using data collected this year and in subsequent seasons, that poster could even have some cousins in the future: a poster ranking safe helmets by position and one that ranks cleats.
“So you could see that over the course of the next year … position-specific helmets are offered,” said Jennifer Langton, the NFL’s senior vice president of health and safety innovation. “But our goal as far as the league office is happening now, once we have … conclusive data, we take us always where the science takes us, to be able to offer that to the manufacturers. Next year, 2021, is where we really have hope for (the players to be wearing those helmets).”
The concept behind position-specific helmets is that everyone’s head is slightly different — Peyton Manning wouldn’t have had to suffer that red rectangular splotch on his forehead from an ill-fitting helmet — and different positions have specific injury risks. Data collected over the years by the NFL bears out the differentiation that quarterbacks’ concussions are largely caused by banging the back of their heads on the turf, while for linemen, the front of the head receives the bulk of the blows. So helmets for specific positions are designed with that data in mind.
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Riddell, Xenith and Schutt are the market leaders involved in the new helmets. Riddell told The Athletic that its next helmet model and future generations of helmets are expected to include “position-specific performance features.”
In fact, the NFL is ahead of schedule in developing position-specific helmets because of advances in 3D technology. Manufacturers use 3D printing to make their products in layers rather than all at once. So in the context of helmets, 3D can customize the headgear for individuals. The NFL originally roughly expected another two years to develop positional helmets, but that timeline has accelerated.
“With the movement on 3D printing and scanning, manufacturers are really starting to dabble already with position-specific helmets,” Langton said. (Except for Riddell, helmet makers contacted for this story were not ready to talk about their plans.)
The NFL is not as far along with cleats, but in some ways, the issue is more pronounced than concussions as lower extremity injuries like ACL and MCL tears are far more common. According to the NFL, players had between 580 and 610 soft-tissue injuries in 2019 compared to 224 diagnosed concussions. Last year, the league began tracking cleats the players wore, with all 32 teams providing data. The idea is to establish trends between cleats and lower-body injuries.
At an NFL media briefing in January, NFL chief medical officer Dr. Allen Sills said that due to a number of contributing factors, like cleats, position played and turf issues, soft-tissue lower-extremity injuries are more complex to study than concussions.
But it is a laborious ask to call on equipment managers and their staff to manually input the cleat types every player wears, every day. So last year, eight teams experimented with automatic tracking. Radio Frequency ID (RFID) tags are affixed to the cleats, and a scanner is installed under the hallway floor leading to the practice field and stadium field. Every time a player passes over, the system inputs the data point.
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Miami Dolphins head trainer Joe Cimino affixed tags in the team’s practice facility locker room last fall, and a floor scanner sits in the hallway outside his door, underneath the carpet. Cimino and his fellow equipment managers are often the unsung heroes of safety measures, so anything the league can do to ease the burden — like using the scanners — is welcome. In another building, an additional scanner takes images of players’ feet and offers recommended cleat sizes and types. It is an evaluation that surely will change if the league has concrete information tying certain cleats to injuries.
Thus far, the cleat efforts are in the early days, where helmets were three to four years ago. This year, the number of teams with automatic syncing of cleat data will rise to as many as 24. The league is also digesting turf data too, so perhaps one day it can recommend the cleat type for a specific turf.
“As we have done very well with helmets and concussions, (we are) taking a look at the on-field occurrence per cleat, what is the injury rate per cleat, and tie that to the laboratory performance testing, which was done this year, but again, it’s one year of analysis,” said Langton, who herself blew out her knee as a lacrosse player in college at the University of Virginia. “So we are full-steam ahead for this year.”
Similarly, with mouthguard sensors, which measure the force of hits, the league experimented with four teams last year and had hoped to move to 16 teams this year. But that might be ambitious during a pandemic because of all the other distractions and new guidelines teams face.
“Last year was the pilot year for that; this year we’re rolling out to up to 16 clubs similar to the way we’re rolling out the technology for shoe performance,” Langton said. “We’re doing the same now working with the clubs and contingency planning. So our goal was 16 teams; we still have the large share of those 16 teams that are absolutely committed to the program. But … within the environment of COVID-19, we’re prepared and ready to take those 16. We just have to ensure that they’re still committed because of the time frame.”
Similar to the cleat-tracking situation, the goal of 24 teams that would automatically scan cleats was a pre-pandemic expectation. How many teams are able to do so given all the COVID-19 protocols is still an unknown.
“We might have some reduction in teams,” Langton said, “but our efforts will not get delayed.”
(Top photo: Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)