Late in his staff’s recreation towards the Inexperienced Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight finish Kylen Granson caught a brief go over the center of the sector, charged ahead, and lowered his physique to brace for contact. The facet of his helmet smacked the face masks of linebacker Quay Walker, and the again of it whacked the bottom as Walker wrestled him down. Rising to his ft after the 9-yard acquire, Granson tossed the soccer to an official and returned to the road of scrimmage for the following snap.
Except for it being his first reception of the 2024 Nationwide Soccer League season, this in any other case abnormal play was solely noteworthy due to what Granson was sporting on the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protecting helmet masking referred to as a Guardian Cap.
Already obligatory for many positions in any respect NFL preseason practices, in addition to regular-season and postseason practices with contact, these tender shells obtained one other vote of confidence this yr when the league greenlit them for optionally available recreation use, citing a roughly 50 p.c drop in coaching camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. By way of six weeks of motion this fall, solely 10 NFL gamers had really taken the sector with one on, based on a league spokesperson. However the resolution was simple for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself coated by a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts brand to simulate the design of the helmet beneath—in preseason video games earlier than committing to put on it for actual.
“I used to be pleasantly stunned that it didn’t have an effect on something for me,” the 26-year-old advised WIRED just a few days earlier than going through the Packers in week two. “I believed, even when it appears to be like type of foolish, it’s value it.”
There is no such thing as a ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s father or mother firm, Guardian Sports activities, even has employees T-shirts that declare, LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard all of them,” says Erin Hanson, cofounder of Guardian Sports activities alongside her husband, Lee Hanson. “We simply giggle, as a result of we agree.”
It may be robust to sq. the fact that the obvious way forward for soccer headgear resembles one thing out of a ’60s-era sci-fi film. However the truth that Guardian Caps are actually allowed in any respect in video games within the NFL—a league identified for policing each inch of participant tools to guard its picture—doesn’t simply communicate to their lab-tested utility (even when printed, peer-reviewed on-field information stays missing). It additionally displays the urgency of the second for soccer at massive.
The risks of strapping on a helmet have by no means been clearer, given the hyperlink between repeated blows to the pinnacle—whether or not concussion-causing or not—and persistent traumatic encephalopathy (in any other case often called CTE, a mind dysfunction related to cognitive points like despair and progressive dementia that may solely be identified posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to search out solutions has turn out to be quicker and extra profitable than ever, between the NFL’s funding of personal analysis efforts and a quickly innovating soccer headgear trade.
And on the heart of all of it, on the game’s largest stage, is a literal mom-and-pop store that, lower than a decade and a half in the past, was struggling to discover a foothold in soccer as something however a joke.
