Recently, trauma suffered by NFL stars has raised new concerns about the league’s ongoing problems with head injuries — and questions about whether the NFL could be doing more to protect its players.
In early September, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered a scary third (undiagnosed) concussion, prompting some fans and former player to urge his retirement. In the wake of that injury, former Green Bay Packers star quarterback Brett Favre revealed a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease during congressional testimony Tuesday, noting that repeated head trauma was likely a major cause. And on Thursday, Malik Nabers, a rookie wide receiver for the New York Giants, set up Record a catch before leaving the game with an injury.
It’s not news that professional football can be dangerous: NFL first acknowledges link between football and CTE — Chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain condition — in 2016. CTE is often found in athletes who suffer repeated head trauma and members of the military who are exposed to explosive blasts, and has been implicated in the deaths of famous football players, including Andre Waters and Mike Webster. More than three hundred former footballers CTE was diagnosed posthumously. (An autopsy of the brain is required to accurately diagnose the condition.)
Because of concerns about CTE and other conditions related to brain injury, The league invested Strategies promoted include improving the equipment players wear, changing rules for practice and game days, and reducing head contact. This season, those changes include allowing players to wear new headgear that better protects players’ brains. This week, however, there was a reminder that big problems remain for America’s most popular sport.
The NFL is working on protections. It is not clear that they are sufficient.
In recent years, the NFL has made major changes to helmets and protective gear, as well as changes to in-game rules aimed at reducing concussions, NFL Chief Medical Officer Allen Seals told Vox.
Perhaps most notable this season was the introduction of a new type of headgear called “guardian caps” — layers of foam padding worn over the helmet during games. The caps that most players will be required to wear during practice beginning in 2022 are intended to reduce the impact players experience when they are hit to the head, potentially by about 10 percent, according to the NFL.
But there are a few problems with caps. One, players don’t have to wear them while playing, and Relatively few players have chosen to do so by limiting their influence so far.
And independent studies haven’t confirmed whether they’re effective. Despite the NFL’s findings, from a separate team of researchers University of North Carolina and University of Nevada-Reno Both have limited ball reduction for players wearing caps, while A third study, from Stanford, Ball reduction was observed in the lab but not when athletes wore them on the field. Sills argues that this variability comes from differences in the researchers’ methods and the NFL’s, and notes that the NFL intends to release its research within the next few months.
The NFL also claimed that its researchers found that Guardian caps reduced concussions by about 50 percent when worn in practice, a finding that some physicians were skeptical of.
A major problem, Doctors told the New York TimesThat good helmets and protective caps shield the head, but they don’t shield the neck — which can be critical for preventing concussions. Hitting and twisting the neck play a major role in causing concussion, they note.
Jamshid Ghazor, a neurosurgeon, told The Times that race car drivers’ helmets, like those used in Formula 1 racing, are more effective at preventing injuries because they also stabilize the neck in the event of an accident. The NFL disputed the Times’ characterization of the concussion, and Seals argued that it was not primarily caused by what he characterized as “neck force.”
The NFL also talked about its use 12 new helmet models this season, That’s supposed to protect players from position-specific injuries, and a new rule means kickoffs — a part of the game where players run toward each other, often at high speeds — are safer. The effectiveness of these changes is still unclear, and it is important to note that even with these changes, football’s fundamental problems involve physical collisions and head contact.
“Prevention is the best way,” says Julie Stamm, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison [head trauma] Shouldn’t be affected.”
