How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL

Specializing in polyurethanes and epoxies, the company has since built, among other things, transparent body shields for the US Army, coatings of fuel tank plates for Boeing airplanes, and the outer layers of multiple brands of golf balls.. Then, in 2010, the Hansons were contacted out of the blue by an industrial designer named Bert Straus, who decades earlier had created a padded helmet attachment, the ProCap, that was worn in games by a handful of NFL players. Explaining that he was working on a new type of headgear, a hard-shell helmet with interior padding as well as a ProCap-esque soft shell mounted on top, Straus enlisted The Hanson Group to make the integral skin foam for this cushioned outer layer...

As development continued throughout 2011, Erin and Lee used money from The Hanson Group to send the caps away for independent drop testinga longtime headgear industry standard in which a helmet-wearing dummy head is dropped onto a modular elastomer pad for measuring impact and shock absorptionat accredited sites like Oregon Ballistic Laboratories, ICS Laboratories, and the Southern Impact Research Center..

They also shelled out for additional outside testing to ensure that the caps wouldnt affect neck torque and that they maintained a lower coefficient of friction relative to the usual football helmets polycarbonate shell, to ensure that crucial sliding effect.. Over the years, weve spent a couple hundred grand on testing, because we did so much before we put them on the field, Erin says..

In addition to their lab component, Cecchi and his colleagues used instrumented mouth guards to look at helmet-to-helmet impacts sustained by a handful of linebackers on Stanfords football team in practices over two seasons: in 2019, when players wore bare helmets, and in 2021, when Guardian Caps were mandatory...

Here again, Biocore, backed by the NFL, is leading the way: According to Bailey Good, a paper unpacking the Guardian Caps effect in their first two years of preseason practice usein particular the leagues touted 50 percent drop in concussions among linemen, tight ends, and linebackers, from an average of 35 in 2018, 2019, and 2021 to 18 during this last postseasonwas submitted a few months ago and is currently being peer reviewed...

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