Concussion expert Chris Nowinski is challenging the NFL’s claims about Guardian Caps, calling them a “scam” and questioning their effectiveness.
Guardian Caps are soft-shell pads that attach to and cover football helmets. They are supposed to help to absorb contact on hits to the helmet.
In 2023, NFL.com reported that league data claimed Guardian Caps “will absorb 11 to 12 percent of the force” when a player’s helmet is hit, and “if both players are wearing the cap and have a helmet-to-helmet hit, the force of the impact is reduced by around 20 percent.”
That same year, NFL Executive Vice President Jeff Miller claimed there was a 52 percent decrease in concussions among players wearing Guardian Caps, compared with the concussion rate for players at the same positions over the previous three years of training camps when Guardian Caps weren’t worn.
Chris Nowinski says the narrative surrounding Guardian Caps is a ‘scam’
Chris Nowinski was a defensive tackle for Harvard and earned All-Ivy League second-team honors in 1999. He received his doctorate in behavioral neuroscience from Boston University in 2017.
He also wrestled for WWE from 2001 to 2003. After suffering several symptoms from a brain injury in 2003, including a headache that persisted for three years, he decided to give up wrestling and made the decision to pursue a career in behavioral neuroscience.
Nowinski co-founded the Concussion Legacy Foundation in 2007, of which he is presently CEO, and Boston University’s CTE Center in 2008, after extensively studying football concussions.
Do Guardian Caps actually work?
“How helpful is actually a guardian helmet?” Pablo Torre asked Chris Nowinski this week on his podcast.
“How do I say this concisely? Much of this Guardian helmet story appears to be a bit of a scam,” Nowinski replied.
“Okay, so, one of the things to appreciate is this Guardian Cap was, existed, it was created by this, you know, independent people thinking, well, maybe more padding is the answer. More padding is not the answer. We already know, your brain is jello floating in fluid. Putting more padding out will help in some situations, but it’s going to hurt in other situations, especially rotation. Bigger, heavier helmet, bigger radius, more rotation.
“So the NFL studied the Guardian Cap as it’s sold to high school players, called the XT, and they said, ‘This isn’t very good, but there’s an idea here. Let’s go take it to our lab.’ What they did is they made something twice as heavy with different materials and that’s what the NFL players wear. It’s only sold for NFL players, called the NXT.
The Guardian Caps high school and college players wear is different from the NFL
“And apparently nobody realizes that what the NFL players are wearing that is okay in lab tests is different than what your high school players are wearing, which doesn’t work in lab tests,” Nowinski continued. “So there’s 500,000 Guardian Caps been sold to high school and college players and youth players that in Virginia Tech lab tests, two kids wearing Guardian Caps get a 2% reduction in rotational acceleration, the thing we think is most correlated with CTE.
“So, Guardian Caps don’t work in high school. They might work in the NFL, a little bit. But what’s been most fascinating is their ability to confuse the public that what the NFL is wearing and mandates is the same thing that the kids are getting. And it’s not.”
“It’s the version the NFL rejected,” Nowinski continued.
Nowinski says the 52 percent decrease in concussions that the NFL claimed ‘wasn’t real’
“When they actually tried to get that published as a peer-reviewed study and they used video, they found out it didn’t work,” Nowinski said. “When they isolated hits to the padding, face mask hits magically were down. So, it was like a small sample random thing. They got the data they wanted. They went to the press and then when it was studied and it needed to be corrected, they did not correct it in the public.”
He added that the NFL’s “own published study showed it wasn’t true.”
“They haven’t retracted it,” he added. “They haven’t made the same effort to pull those headlines back. It’s very clear from their behavior and the conversations I’ve had with them, they love that the public sees the Guardian Caps because it’s basically virtue signaling.”