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If there’s anyone who understands the importance of preventing head injury, it’s Tua Tagovailoa, who considered retirement after suffering multiple concussions last season.
That’s why Tagovailoa is testing a new helmet designed to protect quarterbacks from harmful ground impacts during the Miami Dolphins’ organized team activities this week, Michael David Smith of NBC Sports reported.
“I’m still trying to feel it out, so what better time to feel it out than OTAs? I heard it’s supposedly better than the helmet I was wearing last year,” Tagovailoa said. “If it could be that much more safe, then why not give it a shot?”
NFL executive Jeff Miller told the Associated Press in April that the helmet “performs better in laboratory testing than any helmets we have ever seen for those sorts of impacts.”
This first-of-its-kind quarterback helmet model was approved by both the NFL and NFLPA. It is manufactured by Vicis, a startup that emerged in 2014 with the goal of creating helmets that protected against brain injuries in addition to skull fractures.
The company said its original Zero1 helmet, which has earned high safety ratings since it was introduced to the NFL and NCAA in 2017, featured multiple layers designed to absorb impacts “like a car bumper.”
Unlike regular helmets, which are meant to withstand head-to-head hits, the quarterback version is designed to protect the wearer’s skull from contact with the ground.
“The unique thing is that it has a deformal outer shell, which means when you take an impact in any location on that helmet, it will deform or basically dent in that location to absorb the impact,” Vicis executive Jason Neubauer told the Associated Press of the Zero2 Matrix QB helmet. “What that means for us, as designers or engineers, as we’re looking to optimize it for different types of impacts, we’re able to change unique locations to try to optimize the impact mitigation in any one area.”
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Tua. Pocket presence. Accuracy. pic.twitter.com/u0ovFocEFK
For quarterbacks, the crucial area to protect is where their heads hit the ground during a fall.
The NFL said in February that an overall spike in diagnosed concussions could be attributed partially to an increase in quarterback head injuries. Many of these injuries came when signal-callers smacked into the turf after being hit following throws, like during the play which likely concussed Tagovailoa in December.
“The thing that distinguishes quarterbacks and their concussions is they have a disproportionate number of head-to-ground impacts that cause concussions,” said Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy, per Judy Battista of NFL.com. “This past year we had an increase in the number of quarterback concussions, and it was the same helmet-to-ground dynamic.”
The internal structure of the Vicis quarterback helmet is specifically modified to absorb hits in the places most likely for a quarterback’s head to make contact with the ground, Battista reported.
Tagovailoa is not yet sure if he will be wearing the quarterback helmet during the upcoming season, Smith noted.
