Get used to seeing the “Guardian Cap” on your Sunday National Football League broadcasts this season.
If you’re unfamiliar with the name, you’ve likely seen pictures of it during practices throughout NFL training camps since mid-July. It’s perhaps best described as the combination of an oversized pencil eraser and a waffle iron sitting atop the heads of your favorite players.
It is the latest - and most visually egregious - attempt by the NFL to reduce the amount of concussions suffered by its players during practice and in games. And more long-term, the caps are another step in curbing the onset of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a degenerative brain disease that causes symptoms like memory loss, impaired judgment, poor impulse-control, aggression, and even suicide.
Doctors have posthumously found CTE in the brains of 345 former NFL players. In America’s most popular team sport, which begins its regular season on September 6th, it’s as much about the health of the brain as it is mental health.
Since CTE’s connection to contact sports was identified in the early 2000s – famously captured in the 2015 Oscar-nominated film “Concussion” – the NFL has consistently looked for ways in which it can protect its athletes both during their careers and, more importantly, once their playing days are done:
- In 2011, the league adopted a stringent seven-step concussion protocol that requires a player injured during a game or practice to pass numerous tests before being cleared to return to action
- In recent years, the NFL has used data from game videos and sensors from gear like mouth guards to improve helmets. Biomechanical engineers also test NFL helmets the same way as car crash tests. They use data from each hard hit from games in the evaluations – taking into account each hit’s force, speed, velocity, player position and movement.
- Guardian Caps are now mandatory for NFL practices – resulting in a 50 percent decrease in non-game concussions in 2023 and – are now being instituted in the college, high school and even youth ranks
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Indianapolis Colts star running back Jonathan Taylor and four teammates took the next step during Week 1 of the NFL preseason, donning the Guardian Caps for their game against the Denver Broncos. NFL players are now permitted to use the caps, which are then covered by vinyl fabric depicting the team’s logo, during regular-season games.
Protecting broader mental health in the NFL has been a more nuanced process. Of all the American sports, football is probably the one most infused with outdated codes of masculinity and a “just play through it” mantra that characterized talking about one’s state of mind or emotions as signs of weakness.
In 2019, the league and its players association agreed to a mandate that all 32 teams must have a mental health professional on its staff. Prior to that, a 24-hour crisis hotline called NFL Life Line was the primary resource in place for players or family members of players in distress.
NFL Total Wellness now provides support through every phase of a player’s career, from their rookie orientation to their post-playing career “reintroduction” to broader society, a time many players struggle to adjust now without the structure of a football season to guide them for the first time since grade school.
Neurofeedback is the cornerstone of alphabeats’ technology and the science meaningfully entered the NFL discussion last year as part of the Netflix miniseries “Quarterback.” Kirk Cousins, then playing for the Minnesota Vikings, described his use of clinical neurofeedback treatment as part of his training routine. Following the 2023 season, Cousins signed a four-year, $180 million contract, a massive deal for a 36-year-old quarterback but perhaps a validator of the merits of mental acuity for older players.