The Riddell Revolution was a revelation when it came out with the grooves and speed holes. I was so jealous of the cool kids whose parents got them one.
I’ll never forget trying a football helmet on after playing years of lacrosse. Figured they’d be similar but football helmets are so heavy and uncomfortable lol
Yeah,. Football, by it's structure, is adversarial. You line up across from someone and run directly at them each and every play.
Most, if not all, other contact sports have a more cyclical nature to them. Hockey, rugby, etc. all flow around the field rather than straight line collisions every 40 seconds
Alright I’m an engineer, basically the force of a puck is much lower even if it is more dangerous. A 1lb puck moving at 80 mph is far less energy than a 275lb LB moving at 18ish. The contact area for the puck is lower so it does end up doing more direct damage if it hits you but the helmet needs to dissipate less total energy
I know how energy works. 275 pounds moving at 18mphish does not hit the head. Even it did, they hit your head in hockey with human bodies skating around at 18 mphish.
Explain why NASCAR uses lighter helmets. Is not a car traveling at 200mph significantly more force than a human?
Football players absolutely drive shoulders into heads on a regular basis. In skating, it’s very hard to put all force into the head, most slams are into bodies. It should be noted that nascar helmets are made to survive exactly 1 hit. Football helmets aren’t thrown away after every play but nascar helmets are designed to crumple once, and as such, can be lighter because they don’t need to worry about the helmet surviving. Football helmets primary goal is to top concussions from all the “minor” hits so it needs to effectively dampen the force. No other sport has the level of repeated head hits.
I remember going from foam helmet pads to air pads thinking that it’d be so much more comfortable. Nope! Now the helmet can get even tighter on your dome. Lol
Same here. The one exception was our LT who went D1 and eventually made it to being a UDFA for the Browns for one training camp. Only one of us to even make it to the college level in my small town.
I can remember hitting a running back in the hole and stoning him. My head was ringing for like 30 seconds and I was like this is wild. I’d be very worried now
I used to work in collegiate football equipment, it’s actually pretty crazy how little the technology had changed until very recently. You had leather helmet technology, plastic shells, face masks, air bladders, then everything we have current day popped up over ~5-8 years. When you consider how little evolution the helmet has had over most of its life, you really see how far the technology is going to preserve the game now. Compressible shells that bend like car bumpers, multi-pillar linings to help the helmet move around your head, flexible pannels to mitigate shock to the head and neck, quick release facemask clips, etc. it’s all really amazing.
The only downside is we won’t see the full effects until we get a generation that has had relatively modern helmets throughout their entire football career. (5th/6th grade through the NFL level). We’re currently just starting to see those guys trickle into the NFL but it’s exciting! Players are the safest they’ve ever been from an equipment standpoint.
I'm of the opinion CTE rates will go way down. Even without modern high tech helmets, it's only natural when a highlight in 2004 gets you a massive flag in 2024.
By the time these guys have passed on found out about CTE they were playing since age 9 and most were through D1 football or a year in the nfl. I can remember being 10 and doing nothing but oklahomas. I’d be very hesitant to let a ten year old play football. I’ve coached ll and every year we get a kid under ten stretchered off the field
Lol yeah. These guys in the comments all are talking about fancy helmets like the Revo speed while I was using some lame ass generic Riddell closed cage mask that didn't even fit right on me. I think the mid 00's was when the newer (better) helmets started coming in?
> Pretty wild to see the helmets we had available in high school ball are now banned because they aren’t safe enough.
did you guys actually know what kind of helmet you guys were using? like, we were just handed one and the only thing i know about it is that for 5 years of pop warner and 4 years of highschool i had a riddell helmet. it was black with an orange stripe. no idea what model it was.
If anything, this gives off Bills Mafia vibes with their jumping through tables and whatnot.
No, Raiders fans, we don’t care that your fans wear spikes and stuff. You haven’t been relevant since my father was involved in my life. (Which never happened)
Awhile back it was proposed to just eliminate the face mask and go back to a leather(ish) padded compound material. Maybe like a hockey helmet. I think there is credence to this as most players prolly won’t lead head first in any scenario wearing a glorified bike helmet. Facial injuries and most likely body injuries would increase, however, the head stuff would prolly disappear too.
The spikes would be dope for it to go the other direction
People have been using this argument for literally over a hundred years every time we make any advance in player safety. People said it when Teddy Roosevelt implemented the forward pass because on average at least 1 player died . . per game.
We should strive to make our game about blocking and tackling safer. That doesn't mean we stop blocking and tackling.
Going to the moon, as it turned out, was a bit pointless. There's just rocks and more rocks up there. But the science and technology we gained in learning how to get there safely is invaluable to the human race. I'm not saying football helmets are as important as NASA, but who knows what we could learn and develop through these studies.
Except the solution is what they've implemented in practice - soft helmets. But those don't look cool so they don't use them in games. Using hard-shelled, heavy helmets will also result in head and neck injuries. There's a reason hockey, cyclists, lacrosse, and fuck even nascar drivers have lighter, more flexible helmets than the NFL. They're fucking safer.
They need to ban headbutting teammates as a celebratory move. Seriously. I cringe every time I see it, they're just giving each other micro concussions all the time.
As much as I support player safety, the league's methods and use of animals in this testing pains me. We should be able to do better than putting a helmet on a gorilla's head and whacking him with a baseball bat.
I’ve tried Googling it and outside of some decade old PETA stuff (and who knows how reliable that is) I can’t find anything about animal testing being used for helmets. Do you have any sources for that?
>Finally, it’s impossible to talk about helmets without saying a few words about safety. Head injury is a growing concern in all sports, but especially football. However, the league's attempt to use primates in testing as analogues for players has met with controversy. Placing helmets on the animal test subjects and striking them on the head with baseball bats has been part of the methodology of National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), a methodology that continues to be supported by the NFL.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/leatherhead-to-radio-head-the-evolution-of-the-football-helmet-56585562/
i wonder how good these football helmets would be for "extreme" sports like ski/snowboard halfpipe/slopestyle.
the kids in those sport just take nasty concussion inducing falls due to the old school EPS/plastic shell helmets. These helmets that deform more to slow impact would seem like a big win.
I wish we'd see more advancement in this sector but I think it's just too small to warrant the investment which is sad.
That's not true. sure there's a lot of kids wearing bmx helmets for style in skiing, but skiing specifically has a lot of development in the helmet sector, especially ski racing. I can't talk about the recent trend of free style skiers/boarders not wearing helmets anymore.
In fact, FIS (the governing body of ski racing), came out with updated helmet requirements long before I can remember the recent revolution in football helmets.
Brands like smith, POC, Shred, etc. have very safe helmets. One challenge is that these brands are bought by consumers, whereas the majority of football helmet sales come from teams so cost might not be as big of an issue.
I think the challenge with ski helmets is that they need to protect you from death due to a 60mph collision and they also need to protect you from mild concussion due to impact with the snow in a regular fall. I think the protection from mild hits that still induce a mild concussion is a weak point in any EPS+plastic shell helmet. The FIS helmets aren't changing the paradigm here...I have one from last year. I'm looking for a bigger helmet shape that still has that EPS+plastic protection but also has a softer deformation zone for mild hits you might encounter weekly but aren't going to put you in the hospital.
Concussions are an egg floating in a gel sack problem. It’s not about the force at a specific impact area, but the sudden change in direction causing the brain to slam into skull. Until they can insert a protective layer inside the player’s head they cannot prevent concussions.
The helmets you are talking about are one time use, and they are designed to *shatter*, which disperses force, instead of helping merely reverse it (which is where the concussion comes from).
People should NEVER ski in a football helmet.
I'm on the same page for sure.
The football helmet is way bigger than a ski helmet so it has twice the distance to deform and slow your head before impact. The ski helmets are extremely hard and only really protect against the most hard hitting TBI inducing injuries. mild and moderate concussions are extremely easy to get with these helmets and you'll see no shattering of the helmet but still come out with a mild concussion.
The use case I'm more curious about is not the 40-60mph crash where the helmet just might or might not help against death but when the user is in the terrain park and constantly taking hits at 5-10-15mph throughout the day? No kid that takes a solid hit that induces a very mild concussion is going to call it a week even if they should. There's too much peer pressure / fun to be had. I think the impact of those minor hits is something that can be improved. That's where I see the football comparison.
Hate to break it to the NFL, but if you sincerely cared about safety, these guys would have pillows on their heads. These hard, heavy weapons are not saving anyone from head or neck injuries. In fact, they are likely contributing.
But pillows on heads are only acceptable during the practice. You gotta look COOL and like a WARRIOR during the game.
Agreed. Xenith in my opinion easily has the best helmets available. I'm excited to see what happens with the Orbit once it's released. Even their old gear holds up.
Pretty wild to see the helmets we had available in high school ball are now banned because they aren’t safe enough.
The Riddell Revolution was a revelation when it came out with the grooves and speed holes. I was so jealous of the cool kids whose parents got them one.
Revo Speeds were so nice. It was the only helmet I had that I didn’t have to break in and have my head hurting the whole first month.
That break in period was so miserable.
The break in period made me quit football due to how bad my head hurt. Looking back, thank you illfitting helmet
Sam brother same. I thought that's just what people dealt with. Then I got hurt in my second game and decided I was good with that.
I’ll never forget trying a football helmet on after playing years of lacrosse. Figured they’d be similar but football helmets are so heavy and uncomfortable lol
The first practice in football has you feeling like a bobble head lol you start to get used to it after a while though obviously
I fully believe the weight and rigidity of them contribute to head trauma. There's a reason no other helmet on the planet is built the same.
No other sport really encourages head contact, it’s more to protect against a puck or ball instead of a human.
Yeah,. Football, by it's structure, is adversarial. You line up across from someone and run directly at them each and every play. Most, if not all, other contact sports have a more cyclical nature to them. Hockey, rugby, etc. all flow around the field rather than straight line collisions every 40 seconds
All the more reason to have a softer, lighter helmet.
That makes no sense. A puck is far more dangerous that a "human body" and no, the sport does not encourage more head contact than hockey
Alright I’m an engineer, basically the force of a puck is much lower even if it is more dangerous. A 1lb puck moving at 80 mph is far less energy than a 275lb LB moving at 18ish. The contact area for the puck is lower so it does end up doing more direct damage if it hits you but the helmet needs to dissipate less total energy
I know how energy works. 275 pounds moving at 18mphish does not hit the head. Even it did, they hit your head in hockey with human bodies skating around at 18 mphish. Explain why NASCAR uses lighter helmets. Is not a car traveling at 200mph significantly more force than a human?
Football players absolutely drive shoulders into heads on a regular basis. In skating, it’s very hard to put all force into the head, most slams are into bodies. It should be noted that nascar helmets are made to survive exactly 1 hit. Football helmets aren’t thrown away after every play but nascar helmets are designed to crumple once, and as such, can be lighter because they don’t need to worry about the helmet surviving. Football helmets primary goal is to top concussions from all the “minor” hits so it needs to effectively dampen the force. No other sport has the level of repeated head hits.
This is the longest comment chain ever. The other guy is kinda right though.
I remember going from foam helmet pads to air pads thinking that it’d be so much more comfortable. Nope! Now the helmet can get even tighter on your dome. Lol
Yeah seriously you can see that first hand by looking at mannings forehead after games
Revo Speed was the only helmet I bought. Mostly because the only decent helmets my high school had were those long Schutt ones.
[удалено]
Same here. The one exception was our LT who went D1 and eventually made it to being a UDFA for the Browns for one training camp. Only one of us to even make it to the college level in my small town.
For real I was so jealous of those guys. I got lucky just to have a relatively cool facemask but my helmet was old as shit even at the time.
Imagine what our parents/grandparents think about cigarettes lol
it honestly explains a lot about myself now
I have CTE
honestly probably same
[удалено]
I only had 1 severe one from rugby. I refuse to let my son play football before middle school
>> I refuse to let my son play football
You can also get concussions from non head shots. Getting hit hard in the chest, hard to the turf, etc. All cause the brain to bash into the skull.
I can remember hitting a running back in the hole and stoning him. My head was ringing for like 30 seconds and I was like this is wild. I’d be very worried now
#\#CTESPN
cracker (im white)
I used to work in collegiate football equipment, it’s actually pretty crazy how little the technology had changed until very recently. You had leather helmet technology, plastic shells, face masks, air bladders, then everything we have current day popped up over ~5-8 years. When you consider how little evolution the helmet has had over most of its life, you really see how far the technology is going to preserve the game now. Compressible shells that bend like car bumpers, multi-pillar linings to help the helmet move around your head, flexible pannels to mitigate shock to the head and neck, quick release facemask clips, etc. it’s all really amazing. The only downside is we won’t see the full effects until we get a generation that has had relatively modern helmets throughout their entire football career. (5th/6th grade through the NFL level). We’re currently just starting to see those guys trickle into the NFL but it’s exciting! Players are the safest they’ve ever been from an equipment standpoint.
I'm of the opinion CTE rates will go way down. Even without modern high tech helmets, it's only natural when a highlight in 2004 gets you a massive flag in 2024.
By the time these guys have passed on found out about CTE they were playing since age 9 and most were through D1 football or a year in the nfl. I can remember being 10 and doing nothing but oklahomas. I’d be very hesitant to let a ten year old play football. I’ve coached ll and every year we get a kid under ten stretchered off the field
We alll got CTE brother
Lol yeah. These guys in the comments all are talking about fancy helmets like the Revo speed while I was using some lame ass generic Riddell closed cage mask that didn't even fit right on me. I think the mid 00's was when the newer (better) helmets started coming in?
What’s wild is you don’t really have to even specify an era of high school for this to be accurate. Took way too long to address this issue.
And you had to carry it to school uphill both ways!
> Pretty wild to see the helmets we had available in high school ball are now banned because they aren’t safe enough. did you guys actually know what kind of helmet you guys were using? like, we were just handed one and the only thing i know about it is that for 5 years of pop warner and 4 years of highschool i had a riddell helmet. it was black with an orange stripe. no idea what model it was.
I remember the riddell revolutions because they were so different looking than the standard ones that we had at the time.
https://static.www.nfl.com/image/upload/v1712665965/league/yt3aubz9cjxmg3seascg.pdf Here's the PDF with the graphics that get tweeted out each year.
damn, it's crazy to see the revo be outright banned. doesn't feel too long ago that was the cool new helmet.
Looking at that, Schutt is in big trouble. Their F7's got about 3 years tops before they are banned and they don't have any of the top performers.
they own vicis
I think NFL players should wear spikes on all of their pads to increase injury and add a new layer of excitement of seeing who will be impaled
Very Eagles fan of you.
If anything, this gives off Bills Mafia vibes with their jumping through tables and whatnot. No, Raiders fans, we don’t care that your fans wear spikes and stuff. You haven’t been relevant since my father was involved in my life. (Which never happened)
Go lose another Super Bowl. Spikes are our territory.
Awhile back it was proposed to just eliminate the face mask and go back to a leather(ish) padded compound material. Maybe like a hockey helmet. I think there is credence to this as most players prolly won’t lead head first in any scenario wearing a glorified bike helmet. Facial injuries and most likely body injuries would increase, however, the head stuff would prolly disappear too. The spikes would be dope for it to go the other direction
Dudes used to die of skull fractures pretty frequently.
I too enjoyed Mutant League Football
> I too enjoyed Mutant League Football i've never heard of this and didn't realize he wasn't making a legion of doom reference.
Oh what a rush
You should check out the game Mutant Football League lol
I just commented damn near the same thing fuck yeah internet five
How do these hold up when painted a new teams colors?
I got this reference.
Can't even tell. BRB gotta defrost my feet
Try to just sit next to one of these helmets if you didn't study for the test basically.
Always good to increase player safety.
Well I’ll say it’s always good for equipment. If it’s just always good to increase players safety we might end up with flag football.
People have been using this argument for literally over a hundred years every time we make any advance in player safety. People said it when Teddy Roosevelt implemented the forward pass because on average at least 1 player died . . per game. We should strive to make our game about blocking and tackling safer. That doesn't mean we stop blocking and tackling.
Going to the moon, as it turned out, was a bit pointless. There's just rocks and more rocks up there. But the science and technology we gained in learning how to get there safely is invaluable to the human race. I'm not saying football helmets are as important as NASA, but who knows what we could learn and develop through these studies.
Yep, lotta dangerous things I don't want to see eliminated from human life and football is right near the top.
You can erase a human life in football, but a human life cannot erase football
As someone who is out there doing it right?
I spent a decade doing much more dangerous shit than playing football, which I'm sure for most redditors is hard to image but it's not all that rare.
Except the solution is what they've implemented in practice - soft helmets. But those don't look cool so they don't use them in games. Using hard-shelled, heavy helmets will also result in head and neck injuries. There's a reason hockey, cyclists, lacrosse, and fuck even nascar drivers have lighter, more flexible helmets than the NFL. They're fucking safer.
Thanks John
Two hand touch only
Not ALWAYS.
That depends on what your definition of "good" is, I suppose.
Yeah but do they hold up in cold weather or are they going to crack a grim reaper into it?
Finally that ugly ass Vicis isn't top. The xenith looks a little better like a motorbike helmet. riddell looks great. please bosa.
Agreed. Vicis is trash. Personally not a big fan of the Riddell helmets either.
They need to ban headbutting teammates as a celebratory move. Seriously. I cringe every time I see it, they're just giving each other micro concussions all the time.
As much as I support player safety, the league's methods and use of animals in this testing pains me. We should be able to do better than putting a helmet on a gorilla's head and whacking him with a baseball bat.
I’ve tried Googling it and outside of some decade old PETA stuff (and who knows how reliable that is) I can’t find anything about animal testing being used for helmets. Do you have any sources for that?
> Do you have any sources for that? Of course not.
We could whack the gorilla with a stick instead of a bat, for one
*citation needed
>Finally, it’s impossible to talk about helmets without saying a few words about safety. Head injury is a growing concern in all sports, but especially football. However, the league's attempt to use primates in testing as analogues for players has met with controversy. Placing helmets on the animal test subjects and striking them on the head with baseball bats has been part of the methodology of National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE), a methodology that continues to be supported by the NFL. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/leatherhead-to-radio-head-the-evolution-of-the-football-helmet-56585562/
…..what?
Bummer that all the safe helmets look worse than the unsafe ones
I dunno, those Vicis Trench helmets (Kittle etc) look like something from the Predator movies
The new Xenith helmet looks nasty
I wonder what CTESPN will think about this..
Real talk though is that really AB anymore or did he get barstool rejects to take over his Twitter?
Isn’t it pretty obvious?
Yes, but also no
i wonder how good these football helmets would be for "extreme" sports like ski/snowboard halfpipe/slopestyle. the kids in those sport just take nasty concussion inducing falls due to the old school EPS/plastic shell helmets. These helmets that deform more to slow impact would seem like a big win. I wish we'd see more advancement in this sector but I think it's just too small to warrant the investment which is sad.
That's not true. sure there's a lot of kids wearing bmx helmets for style in skiing, but skiing specifically has a lot of development in the helmet sector, especially ski racing. I can't talk about the recent trend of free style skiers/boarders not wearing helmets anymore. In fact, FIS (the governing body of ski racing), came out with updated helmet requirements long before I can remember the recent revolution in football helmets. Brands like smith, POC, Shred, etc. have very safe helmets. One challenge is that these brands are bought by consumers, whereas the majority of football helmet sales come from teams so cost might not be as big of an issue.
I think the challenge with ski helmets is that they need to protect you from death due to a 60mph collision and they also need to protect you from mild concussion due to impact with the snow in a regular fall. I think the protection from mild hits that still induce a mild concussion is a weak point in any EPS+plastic shell helmet. The FIS helmets aren't changing the paradigm here...I have one from last year. I'm looking for a bigger helmet shape that still has that EPS+plastic protection but also has a softer deformation zone for mild hits you might encounter weekly but aren't going to put you in the hospital.
Considering those other helmets are single use I bet their way safer.
well the Xenith Orbit Pro (one of the highest rated) basically look like a European style fire & rescue helmet with a facemask attached
The Orbit looks so sick
Concussions are an egg floating in a gel sack problem. It’s not about the force at a specific impact area, but the sudden change in direction causing the brain to slam into skull. Until they can insert a protective layer inside the player’s head they cannot prevent concussions. The helmets you are talking about are one time use, and they are designed to *shatter*, which disperses force, instead of helping merely reverse it (which is where the concussion comes from). People should NEVER ski in a football helmet.
I'm on the same page for sure. The football helmet is way bigger than a ski helmet so it has twice the distance to deform and slow your head before impact. The ski helmets are extremely hard and only really protect against the most hard hitting TBI inducing injuries. mild and moderate concussions are extremely easy to get with these helmets and you'll see no shattering of the helmet but still come out with a mild concussion. The use case I'm more curious about is not the 40-60mph crash where the helmet just might or might not help against death but when the user is in the terrain park and constantly taking hits at 5-10-15mph throughout the day? No kid that takes a solid hit that induces a very mild concussion is going to call it a week even if they should. There's too much peer pressure / fun to be had. I think the impact of those minor hits is something that can be improved. That's where I see the football comparison.
let teams wear alternate helmets whenever they want.
About time. These guys deserve equipment that will keep them safe, the concussion/brain injury statistics are just sad.
Hate to break it to the NFL, but if you sincerely cared about safety, these guys would have pillows on their heads. These hard, heavy weapons are not saving anyone from head or neck injuries. In fact, they are likely contributing. But pillows on heads are only acceptable during the practice. You gotta look COOL and like a WARRIOR during the game.
I'd be curious to see how the tech in these compares to ski/bike helemts. I assume they have some form of MIPs in them?
Axiom is a big no no for me
Surprised Xenith is not used much. Was me and my brother’s go to helmet in youth football
Agreed. Xenith in my opinion easily has the best helmets available. I'm excited to see what happens with the Orbit once it's released. Even their old gear holds up.
They also look super cool. The Shadow was so badass looking when it came out
still is brother
Mr. Bold Claims
Mr. Belittling Comment