Late in his workforce’s sport towards the Inexperienced Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight finish Kylen Granson caught a brief move over the center of the sphere, charged ahead, and lowered his physique to brace for contact. The aspect 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 toes after the 9-yard acquire, Granson tossed the soccer to an official and returned to the road of scrimmage for the subsequent snap.
Other than it being his first reception of the 2024 Nationwide Soccer League season, this in any other case strange play was solely noteworthy due to what Granson was sporting on the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded, protecting helmet protecting known 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 sport use, citing a roughly 50 % drop in coaching camp concussions since their official 2022 debut. By way of six weeks of motion this fall, solely 10 NFL gamers had truly taken the sphere with one on, in response to a league spokesperson. However the choice was straightforward for Granson, who tried out his gameday Guardian Cap—itself lined 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 shocked 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 seems to be sort of foolish, it’s price it.”
There isn’t a ignoring the goofy aesthetics of the puffy, blobby Guardian Caps. The product’s guardian 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 truth 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 at the moment are 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 revealed, peer-reviewed on-field knowledge stays missing). It additionally displays the urgency of the second for soccer at massive.
The hazards of strapping on a helmet have by no means been clearer, given the hyperlink between repeated blows to the top—whether or not concussion-causing or not—and power traumatic encephalopathy (in any other case referred to as CTE, a mind dysfunction related to cognitive points like despair and progressive dementia that may solely be recognized posthumously). Not coincidentally, the race to seek out solutions has turn into sooner and extra profitable than ever, between the NFL’s funding of personal analysis efforts and a quickly innovating soccer headgear business.
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.