![]() The Raiders have been sending Brown other approved helmets to try out but, at this time, he is not interested in wearing any of them.- Adam Schefter August 9, 2019īrown took it a step further and even threatened the league with civil action if he does incur a head injury this season while wearing the new helmet. I can certainly understand the position that perhaps the newer helmets negatively affect a player’s field of vision, and that appears to be the case with newly minted and forever troublesome Oakland Raiders wide receiver Antonio Brown.Īntonio Brown believes the new helmet that the rules mandate he wears protrudes out and interferes with his vision as he tries to catch football. You talk about behavioral changes are hard I’ve tried new helmets and I’m like, ‘Doesn’t work, get that out of here!’ You just have to get comfortable with it.” “I still wear a very old helmet, probably out of habit. I think that’s a positive,” Brady said at the Milken Institute Global Conference. They’re trying to find helmets the players will wear that will absorb force better. “You’ve seen something a certain way for a long period of time, so I like as much vision as possible with the peripheral vision,” Brady said last summer.īrady has been one of the few players to openly voice his opinion on how the new rule affects his ability to do what he does best. Why would players risk their brain health for a particular brand and model? I can’t say for sure, but I assume the choice was made more for comfort than for neglect of their brains.īrady tried switching to a newer and safer helmet last year, but ended up returning to his long time model, the Riddell VSR-4. By the end of the season, 74% were wearing green labelled models with only 2% wearing red labelled ones.ģ2 players chose to use their soon to be banned models last year despite the risk. At the beginning of 2018, only 41% of NFL players were wearing green labelled helmet models with another 17% wearing red labelled models. The players, now educated with stats and facts, overwhelmingly chose right. By simply posting the helmet testing results in locker rooms last season, the NFL and NFLPA were able to give the players information they could use to choose their safety equipment. That’s obviously still a lot of concussions in a league of roughly 2,000 players, but it did represent a 24% decrease from the previous season.Ī growing national awareness of head trauma and its effects have no doubt played a part in this positive trend. ![]() In 2017, the league recorded 281 concussions, but just one year later, in 2018, the league recorded 214 concussions. After all, the league recorded an almost 16% rise in diagnosed concussions from 2016 to 2017. It’s not shocking the NFL is trying to take more control over player safety and hopefully reduce the instance of concussions by mandating newer and safer helmet models. ![]() Newer models typically use Thermoplastic Urethane Cushioning, or TPU, which has been proven to absorb more impact than foam padding. Older models, like Tom Brady’s Riddell VSR-4, used traditional foam padding. Suitable, but less protective models are labelled yellow, while the models labelled red are now completely prohibited from any field of play. The best performing helmets are labelled green. The NFL and NFLPA collaborated to assemble a skilled team of bio-mechanical engineers who for the past five years have been testing the protective levels of dozens of models of football helmets.
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