The league was pleased to see Patriots quarterback Tom Brady choose to ditch a now-banned helmet before his 2019 deadline for doing so. The league may not be pleased to see that Brady has switched back to his now-banned helmet.
As noticed during the NBC pregame show by my son Alex, who provides me with a second set of eyes and ears on Sundays during the season, Brady has ditched his new helmet for the Riddell VSR-4 that he had worn for years.
Last week, Brady wore the old helmet during pregame warmups, but then he switched to the new helmet for the game. This week, he didn’t.
Last month, Brady said he liked the new helmet, but he expressed some concern about the ability of defensive players to get their fingers close to his face.
“There’s got to obviously be some protection over here because fingers can get, you know,” Brady told reporters in August. “It hasn’t happened too often in my career but I’ve had a few hands get through the mask a little bit and typically quarterbacks have much more open, like receivers probably do, with the vision. Yeah, I mean, the more you can have the better. It’s not quite going to be like the old Sean Landeta punter one where you had the one bar but it provides enough [protection]. But I really like it. It’s been a good transition, smooth transition, which is all I could ask for.”
Apparently, the transition wasn’t smooth enough. Come next year, it won’t matter; the VSR-4 will be banned for good. If Brady keeps playing in 2019, he’ll need to find a different helmet.
In addition to the Riddell VSR-4, the league has banned the Schutt Air XP, the Schutt Air XP Pro, and the Schutt Vengeance Z10. Any returning players who wore any of those models in 2017 can wear them in 2018 only, and they are encouraged to have a discussion with their team’s equipment and medical personnel about the choice in headgear.