I don’t know if they can reduce concussions much with helmet design since the brain still slams around inside the skull on a sudden stop. I think there are a couple that work better than others and the NFL ought to forego the licensing contracts and make the players wear the safest design available.

Good point. Also, it was tough to tell, but in that nine-sack first half, the prevailing thought by millions like me not in the know is that Cutler got his concussion the same way: helmet to turf.

it’s tough, because every bit you add to the helmet is that much weight with which the neck has to deal.

Last season, I saw Packer QB, Aaron Rogers and Vikings QB, Bret Favre, suffer concussions that caused both to miss the next start.

Neither Rogers’ or Favre’s concussion was a result of helmet to helmet contact, so Goodell had no one to fine in either case. Both Rogers and Favre suffered their concussion when the side of their helmet hit the turf.
There was no helmet to helmet contact in these two examples and as you can see, neither hit was illegal or what I would consider a hard hit.

IMO, both of these examples show just how poorly the helmets are in the NFL when it comes to protecting a player’s brain.

The problem is the poor quality of today’s football helmets. The NFL and football at all levels are still using the same technology that was first introduced back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. A rock hard plastic outer shell with padding lining the inside of the helmets.

There have been different kinds of padding added inside the helmets as well air padding to help get the perfect fit. Yet, players continue to get concussions.

After 50 yrs of little advancement in helmet safety, it is time to think about adding a padded layer over the rock hard outer shell. It has been tried in the past…Willie Lanier in 1967 to 1977, Mark Kelso 1986-1993, Steve Wallace in the 1990s.

In all 3 of these cases, the players credited the extra layer of padding on the “outside” of their helmets for extending their careers. In short, adding a padded layer to the outside of the rock hard outer shell “WORKED”.

If the NFL was truly concerned about player safety, Roger Goodell would mandate new helmets with padding on the outside of the hard outer shell.

Yes, it would be a big deal, because someone probably has patent rights on this idea…and it may not be “Riddell”. Every level of football would want the safest helmet for their players, which means Riddell might not be in business.

It is time for Goodell and the NFL to stop playing around with player safety and mandate the improvement ASAP.

jmho..mac

This is why we can’t have nice things.

Body pads will eliminate the hard outer shells, replacing those with carbon fiber or other flexible tough material on which to mount the padding.

Helmets will undergo a drastic change, and we will look back on the current hard outer plastic helmets with the same regard as we do the quaint leather helmets of the early years.

Helmets will be made with small inner pads, some type of semi rigid liner, with a covering of larger pads. The outer shell will be some kind of fabric, again like flexible carbon fiber.

The overall objective will be to absorb much greater amounts of impact than today, without the rapid deceleration of existing technology.

Technology solved the problems of helmets snapping drivers necks in racing (the HANS device) and the same investments in revised technology need to come to football.

It will always be a violent sport, but technology can be made to deal with the recent, rapid awareness of the seriousness of concussions — and largely get rid of them.

That hit was legal according to the rules.

So yeah, there very much is a double standard. Too bad Roger Goodell and the rest of the idiots with the competition committee don’t want to correct it.

I don’t want guys carted off bloodied and battered, but this is becoming uninteresting to watch, and the “unequal protection under the law” is frustrating to watch. Different calls from different officials that dramatically changes the out come of games. It seems that a teams’ success has a lot to do with how much the Bureaucracy comes down on them. If a team navigates the bureaucracy better than other teams, they’re champion.

In the time between a play finishing and the refs huddling up like they do after every call a guy in the booth can do a quick review of the play, kind of like they do for scoring plays. If the call was blatantly wrong due to a bad angle or something happening too fast on field they can tell them to pick up the flag. If the wrong call is blatant on replay it will take only a second to spot.

The fines still go to the charity fund, right?

Seems to me the penalty is the only negative and that is manageable as longs as you respond properly.

I’m sure that nobody who reads this site has never experienced “change” in the workplace.
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And when those people realize the change negatively impacts their ability to do their job effectively, they complain about it too to whoever will listen. So what’s your point?

Only difference is he has a high-profile occupation and when he complains millions of people might be listening. But there’s nothing unusual about his reaction, especially since he’s right.

NFL officials don’t have the egos of MLB umpires and NBA refs so there’s no issue with exposing bad calls minutes later, and the game is simply too fast to regularly make real-time judgements from 10+ yards away.

I’m sure that nobody who reads this site has never experienced “change” in the workplace.

Poor guy