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I sincerely hope this is the last I write about the Antonio Brown helmet saga, but as long as the dude continues to be impossibly stubborn, we’ll have to keep doing this song and dance.
Just yesterday, Antonio Brown filed his second grievance against the NFL after the league closed a loophole that would allow Brown to wear his preferred helmet, the Schutt Air Advantage, a helmet that was discontinued back in 2011.
The league has held firm on its stance, saying, a “player can’t practice or play in games with equipment that’s not approved.”
Pro Football Talk’s Peter King visited helmet manufacturer Vicis, the company that makes the league’s premiere helmet. King brought with him a 2006 Schutt Air Advantage to test it against the Vicis Zero1, using a battering tool to determine respective forces on the brain.
The results: Antonio Brown is a delusional jerkface.
Via NBC Sports:
When impact-tested by the battering tool, the Schutt helmet recorded 73 g’s of force that would have impacted the brain. At the same force, the Vicis helmet, with its slightly malleable outer shell, recorded 53 g’s that would have impacted the brain. So, the brain of a player wearing this Schutt helmet would feel 37.7 percent more force of impact than the force on a brain protected by the new Vicis model.
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It also should be noted that five years ago, Schutt explained why it discontinued the Air Advantage, claiming that it’s technology is antiquated. The Air Advantage was the last varsity helmet made by Schutt that featured traditional foam padding, which does not perform nearly as well as the TPU (thermoplastic urethane) Cushioning that is ubiquitous is all varsity helmets Schutt’s made since. TPU absorbs much more impact across a wider range of temperatures, and a third party tester has found that three years in a row.
Who knows where and when this nightmare will end, but the patience of the Raiders is wearing thinner by the day.