Lately, trauma suffered by NFL stars has raised recent considerations in regards to the league’s ongoing points with head accidents — and raised questions on whether or not there’s extra the NFL may do to guard its gamers.
In early September, Tua Tagovailoa, a quarterback for the Miami Dolphins, suffered a daunting third (recognized) concussion, prompting some followers and former gamers to induce his retirement. Within the wake of that damage, former Inexperienced Bay Packers star quarterback Brett Favre disclosed a prognosis of Parkinson’s illness throughout congressional testimony on Tuesday, noting that repeated head trauma was probably a significant component. And on Thursday, Malik Nabers, a rookie large receiver for the New York Giants, set a receiving document earlier than leaving the sport with a concussion.
It isn’t information that skilled soccer could be harmful: The NFL first admitted the connection between soccer and CTE — continual traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative mind situation — in 2016. CTE is most frequently present in athletes who are suffering repeated hits to the top and members of the army who’re uncovered to explosive blasts, and has been tied to the deaths of well-known soccer gamers, together with Andre Waters and Mike Webster. Greater than 300 former soccer gamers have been recognized with CTE following their deaths. (The situation requires a mind post-mortem to precisely diagnose.)
Resulting from considerations about CTE and different situations associated to mind trauma, the league has invested in bettering the gear that gamers put on, modified guidelines for observe and sport day, and promoted strategies meant to scale back head contact. This season, these adjustments embrace permitting gamers to put on new headgear meant to raised defend gamers’ brains. This week, nonetheless, was a reminder that main issues stay for America’s hottest sport.
The NFL is engaged on protections. It’s not clear they’re sufficient.
Lately, the NFL has made main adjustments to helmets and protecting gear, in addition to shifts to in-game guidelines aimed toward decreasing collisions, NFL Chief Medical Officer Allen Sills instructed Vox.
Maybe probably the most noticeable this season is the introduction of a brand new sort of headgear known as “Guardian Caps” — layers of froth padding worn over a helmet — throughout video games. The caps, which most gamers have been required to put on when working towards since 2022, are meant to scale back the affect that gamers expertise in the event that they get hit within the head, probably by about 10 p.c, in keeping with the NFL.
There are a couple of points with the caps, nonetheless. One, gamers aren’t required to put on them throughout video games, and comparatively few gamers have chosen to take action up to now, limiting their affect.
And unbiased research additionally haven’t confirmed whether or not they’re efficient. Regardless of the NFL’s findings, separate groups of researchers from the College of North Carolina and the College of Nevada-Reno each discovered restricted reductions in drive for gamers sporting the caps, whereas a 3rd examine, from Stanford, noticed drive reductions within the lab however not when athletes wore them on the sphere. Sills argues this variability comes from variations within the researchers’ methodology and the NFL’s, and notes that the NFL intends to publish its analysis inside the subsequent few months.
The NFL additionally claims its researchers discovered that Guardian Caps lowered concussions by roughly 50 p.c when worn in observe, a discovering that some physicians have been skeptical of.
One predominant situation, docs instructed the New York Instances, is that higher helmets and Guardian Caps protect the top, however they don’t protect the neck — which could be important for stopping concussions. Hits and twisting of the neck play a serious function in inflicting concussions, they observe.
As Jamshid Ghajar, a neurosurgeon, instructed the Instances, race automobile drivers’ helmets, like these utilized in Components 1 racing, are simpler at stopping concussions as a result of they stabilize the neck even in circumstances of a crash. The NFL has disputed the Instances’s characterization of concussions, and Sills argued that concussions aren’t predominantly attributable to what he characterised as “neck forces.”
The NFL has additionally touted its use of 12 new helmet fashions this season, that are supposed to guard gamers from position-specific blows, and a brand new rule meant to make kickoffs — part of the sport by which gamers run towards each other, typically at excessive speeds — safer. The effectiveness of those adjustments remains to be unclear, and it’s necessary to notice that even with these adjustments, the elemental situation of soccer involving bodily collisions and head contact stays.
As Julie Stamm, a neuroscientist on the College of Wisconsin Madison, notes, “one of the best ways to forestall [head trauma] is to not have impacts.”
