New NOCSAE Regulations Aimed at Absorbing Rotational Forces

A few weeks ago, the Kansas City Star reported that the Kansas-City area National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) will begin to include the measurement of rotational forces in its football helmet standards starting in June of next year. The NOCSAE is a nonprofit that sets testing standards for helmets in various contact sports including football, hockey, and lacrosse. The organization itself does not certify helmets, but helmet manufacturers certify their products to meet the NOCSAE standards. Currently, the NFL, NCAA, and governing bodies for high school sports require that helmets used meet NOCSAE standards, and thus the regulations established by the NOCSAE completely dictate the direction of research and development in new helmet technologies.

Riddell's Air Bladder Design

The design and technology of football helmets has been constantly evolving since football developed into its (somewhat) contemporary form at the beginning of the 20th century. At that time, leather helmets were used by some players, but helmets didn’t become mandatory in college football until 1939 and in the NFL until 1943. In 1940, the John T. Riddell Company was formed in Chicago and developed the first football helmets made of molded plastic shells rather than of leather, and gradually innovations such as the chin strap and the facemask gained popularity as well. In 1970, Riddell filed a US patent for “Energy Absorbing and Sizing Means” for football helmets, which introduced the technology of air bladders in football helmets, a structure which is still used today. Before that point, the interior of football helmets simply consisted of foam padding, similar to what you would find in many contemporary lacrosse or hockey helmets. But with development of air bladders that sit behind this foam padding, which can be inflated or deflated easily using a small pump, helmets could be tailored to form a unique fit for every individual head. Theoretically, a football helmet that fits well is so tight that if someone were to grab a player's facemask and move it side to side, the player’s entire head would move as well, rather than the interior of the helmet brushing about his scalp. Now the padding in football helmets is extremely dense and a truly skin-tight fit is really uncomfortable, so I suspect that many players don’t fit their helmets as tightly as they should, especially at the high school and youth levels.

While I’m sure there’s been an understood relationship between football and head injuries for as long as the game has existed, it’s important to recognize that football’s “concussion crisis” is a relatively new phenomenon. Concussions were rarely talked about 10 years ago, let alone 45 years ago when the development of the air bladder system formulated the technology that is still used in helmets today. And therein lies the problem with contemporary helmets: they’re designed to prevent catastrophic head injuries (ie skull fractures), but don’t actually do much to prevent concussions. Because concussions are internal injuries, where a blow to the head causes the brain, suspended in cerebrospinal fluid, to slosh around and receive axonal damage by bumping into the interior walls of the skull, a hard protective layer around the head doesn’t do a lot to prevent these injuries. Think about an egg. Let’s say you created some sort of hard layer to put an egg in that would protect the shell. If you dropped the egg on the floor, you might prevent the shell from cracking, but you’re not going to be able to prevent the yolk inside of the egg from moving around.

Medical professionals and helmet manufacturers alike recognize this problem. Many months ago, I wrote a post on how every football helmet has a warning sticker on the back of it. Different manufacturers use slightly different language in their warnings, but they all concede that no helmet can prevent brain injuries. This problem is especially true in the case of hits to the head that cause rotational forces, because again, it’s the internal movement of the brain that causes concussions, not necessarily the amount of blunt force applied to an area. Dr. Frank Conidi, a professor of neurology at the Florida State University College of Medicine and director of the Florida Center for Headache and Sports Neurology, stated in 2014 that “biomechanics researchers have long understood that rotational forces, not linear forces, are responsible for serious brain damage including concussion, brain injury complications and brain bleeds.”

Therefore, for all the advancements made in helmet technology in the past few decades, there are really only a couple that I can think of that actually help disperse rotational forces, and they’re both arguably not that significant. The first is that modern helmets are actually rounder than they were in the 1970s and 1980s. As you can see in the picture of Mike Ditka below, helmets used to be more in the shape of an oval, similar to how the human head is shaped.

However, the more spherical two objects are, the less surface area will come in contact between them should they collide. So theoretically, rounder football helmets are safer because direct the surface area of helmet-to-helmet can be diminished a bit, especially if hits are coming at odd angles. The second thing is something I don’t know if I’d call an “innovation,” because it’s been around for decades, and it’s difficult to argue not only whether it’s deliberate or not, but also if it’s even true, especially because I’ve never seen a study confirm or even attempt to confirm this belief. But regardless, some people also believe that the glossy finishes on football helmets reduces friction between helmets that collide, and thus disperses rotational forces more than matte finished helmets would. Whether there’s any veracity in that claim, I’m not sure. But I can see the logic.

But anyway, the question for the future of football helmet technology is what can done to absorb rotational forces. Like I said earlier, theoretically with the air bladder system, the fit of the helmet is so snug that the entire head of a player would move if his facemask would move. And clearly, that might not be the best system for reducing rotational forces. There are currently a couple helmet companies that already have produced helmet models constructed with rotational forced in mind. One is the company Xenith. Their helmets don't use air bladders, and instead fit the helmet with a web system that tightens or expands using the chinstrap, which is connected to the interior structure of the helmet. One of the their models, the Xenith X2, is pictured on the right. The shell of the helmet can rotate independently of the white web that surrounds the player's head, theoretically helping to disperse the rotational forces that impact the head. Xenith helmets certainly aren't the most popular in the NFL, but you'll definitely see them occasionally and their popularity has definitely grown in the past few years. Another company, VICIS, a startup based in Seattle, is also developing a helmet with the idea of dispersing rotational forces. Their helmet design, called ZERO1, also doesn't use an air bladder. The outer layer of their helmet consist of many columns which can both compress and also move laterally, therefore absorbing forces from any angle. More uniquely, the shell of the helmet isn't perfectly rigid like that of other helmets, and instead gives a big to further absorb impact and disperse force. Check out the video below to learn more about the ZERO1. These helmets are still being tested and developed, but it'd be pretty cool to see them at the NFL, NCAA, and high school levels in coming years. Overall, hopefully the new NOCSAE tests will incentivize even more helmet companies to develop technology aimed at absorbing and dispersing rotational forces.

Michael Oher Still in Concussion Protocol

As far as the different positions go, offensive tackles certainly don't have the same star power as do positions like quarterback, running back, or middle linebacker. Many committed fans probably couldn't even identify which position on the offensive line that tackles play, let alone name who their favorite teams' starting tackles are. But Michael Oher, left tackle for the Carolina Panthers, is probably one of the most famous offensive linemen in the league, not just for his 8 year NFL career or for his role on the 2013 Baltimore Ravens team that won the Super Bowl, but for the movie The Blind Side, which was a semi-autobiographical account of Oher's experiences growing up in foster care and with periods of homelessness, his eventual adoption by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, and his academic and athletic achievements that enabled him to receive an athletic scholarship to the University of Mississippi. 

However, talk of Oher sort of disappeared early on in the 2016 season, as he played in only the first three games of the season before being ruled out before week four with a concussion. Oher missed the next two months of the season, and was placed on injured reserve on November 25th, 2016. On March 24th of this year, Panthers general manager Dave Gettleman stated that Oher is still in the league's concussion protocol, making it six full months since he was placed in the protocol in week four. On March 30th, the Charlotte Observer reported that Panthers head coach Ron Rivera stated, "I believe he's going to play," referring to getting Oher back in the lineup for the 2017 season.

Even putting all concerns about long-term health aside, I can't imagine why any coach or front office person would keep a player on their roster that has been in concussion protocol for six months. Obviously every brain injury is unique and it's impossible to predict someone's path of recovery or long-term prognosis, but if a player has been unable to pass concussion protocol (which consists of neuropsychological evaluation which tests cognitive and balance functions, and then moves to a graduated increase of physical activity from light aerobic activities, to football-specific workouts, to non-contact drills, to full-contact practice) for six months, the chances that he's all-of-a-sudden going to get healthy in time for next season, and, more importantly, that he'll stay healthy throughout the following year, is extremely unlikely. And what baffles me the most is that this situation happens way more often than it should, where a good player enters concussion protocol for a prolonged period time (like months), but then returns the following year only to eventually re-enter the concussion protocol once again. This exact situation happened with Steelers tight end Ladarius Green, who I wrote an article about in December. You'd think that NFL teams would stop taking chances on these guys given the risks involved. And again, here I'm only talking about the financial and logistical risks of signing a player who might not be able to play in every game, not the larger question of whether a player with a history of concussions should at some point be blacklisted (either formally or informally) from being signed by teams in the future.

Answering that bigger question is a bit tougher, and it depends on a lot of different variables at play. In the case of Oher, I don't think it could be more obvious that he should hang up the cleats. I mean, the guy is 30 years old, he's been in the NFL for eight years, he's a multimillionaire, he's a Super Bowl champion, he had a movie made about his life that was nominated for an Academy Award. What else does he need to prove? A player who is 23, has only been in the NFL for one year and is still trying to make a name for himself and make enough money where the past 8+ years he's invested in football might seem financially worthwhile, maybe I could see his reasoning for wanting to keep trying to get healthy and play another year (of course, I certainly would certainly advise him against it, but I'm just saying I understand his argument). But it makes no sense for Oher to stick around or for the Panthers to take a chance on him by keeping him for the 2017 season, because he's already had a long career, and he's at the age where he's deteriorating as a player anyway, concussion issues or not.

Now, I don't think it would be right for the NFL to ever literally force a player to retire over concussion issues, for a few reasons. One, there's a 100% injury rate in the game of football. It's unfortunate, but it's a reality that players obviously understand and experience every year. And more recently, I think an increasing amount of players also understand the symptoms of concussions and the risks of concussions on long-term health. But another important thing to consider is that if the NFL were to ever force players to retire due to concussions, it would strongly discourage players from reporting concussions to medical staff and/or teams from reporting concussions to the media out of fear of a player's career being cut short (the irony here should be pretty obvious).

I think a good solution might be a shift in the perception of signing or resigning players with a known history of prolonged concussion symptoms. To discuss Ladarius Green again, I guarantee the Steelers organization knew about the concussion history he had with the Chargers when they decided to sign him as a free agent. In fact, they probably discussed it at length before making a decision on his contract. But they decided that it wasn't significant enough to avoid signing him, even though he was healthy for only six games in the 2016 season. A big shift should come from the media as well. I mean, there's many different non-directly-football-related reasons that teams choose not to sign players, and much of this reasoning comes due to perceived media reaction. For example, most teams avoid signing players with histories of off-the-field incidents such as DUIs, assault charges, domestic violence, among other things. While I'd like to think that the decision to not sign these players is because NFL teams care about having players with high standards of conduct, a large incentive for these decisions more likely comes from the perceived impact it will have on a team's PR. You would think that if the media viewed signing a player with a history of concussions as a negative action by NFL teams, and if situations like what happened with Green or what is currently happening with Oher received more media scrutiny, they'd be less likely to do it.