New York, NY – As “Concussion” is set to be in the theaters at the end of the month, the dark cloud of players health looms ominously over the league. Concussions are without a doubt the biggest issue facing the NFL presently.
Of course, the NFL is not sitting idly by as their player’s long term health is in question. A hunt for a solution is underway.
Back in March of 2013, the NFL, GE and Under Armour announced the “Head Health Challenge” that called for any company or individual to come up with their best ideas to diagnose and prevent concussions. The first round of this initiative was focused on the diagnosis and ways to treat the injuries. Six winners were announced in July.
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The second round was focused on technology that would make the NFL safer for its players. These Round 2 winners were announced last week and the technology and teams that produced it were on display at the NFL Headquarters in Manhattan.
There were three winning products out of almost 500 entries and with their winning entries they each received an undisclosed sum of money from the NFL to continue their manufacturing and research for another year in 2016.
NFL senior vice president of health and safety Jeff Miller told FOX Sports, “Is this exciting? Yeah, these things are going to affect football at all levels and other sports, too,” at league headquarters as the three winners were presenting their products. “You talk about better fields, new technologies being developed by the Army, which may help our military, and technology in football helmets that may be adapted to a bicycle or lacrosse helmet.”
1. US Army
The first winner was from the US Army who has developed a helmet that specifically is trying to combat the issue of a backwards impact when a player’s head hits the ground falling backwards and thus has no way to brace for impact and protect their head.
The Army developed a proprietary system that would attach to the shoulder pads up to the helmet. It is specifically designed to work freely with any player’s movement except when there is a sudden motion that jerks the head backwards. When a sudden backwards motion is initiated on the field the device would spring into action and limit the contact of the player’s helmet to the field and thus limit the traumatic impact of the brain hitting the turf.
The Army team specifically mentioned the Case Keenum injury a few weeks ago in Baltimore as an injury that might not have been fully prevented, but could have been limited with their new addition to the helmet. This product is still in the works though and is expected to be available for purchase within 18 months.
2. Viconic Sporting
The second winner was Viconic Sporting, who has developed a specific layer of technology designed to go underneath the existing field of play and brace the impact of a player hitting the ground limiting the impact on the player’s helmet and brain. Viconic has been primarily in the automotive field, but they noticed lots of similarities between impacts of drivers in vehicle collisions and NFL collisions on the field and has begun developing their technology for athletic competition.
It is also being used currently in the US Army to limit the impact on soldiers when IED’s detonate under Army vehicles. In a demonstration at NFL HQ, Viconic showed that the head injury impact criterion (HIC) for normal players is over 1100 but with their under-layer that number is reduced by 75% and goes down to 274.
3. University of Washington
The third and final winner was the University of Washington, who developed a helmet that helps offset the impact of a helmet-to-helmet collision that often causes a concussion. The helmet contorts shape to brace the impact and also has proprietary technology inside the shell that combats even more impact to prevent as much traumatic effects from reaching the head and brain as possible.
The Univ. of Washington mentioned that they were unable to mention the technology that went into the interior of the helmet, but will share next month in an official unveil.
The main benefits that they demonstrated from their helmet is that the head inside the helmet will have much less spring-back compared to a normal helmet which obviously limits the force on the head and neck to absorb the impact of a football-type collision.
Looking Forward
While the concussion issue in the NFL is far from over, the Head Health Challenge second phase has shown the league is invested in the success of solving this issue. As the calendar turns to 2016 and these products begin to hit the market for anyone to buy, it will be interesting to see if these high-level technology innovations can help America’s most popular sport with its most serious problem.
