NFL launches challenge to improve facemasks and reduce concussions

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The NFL is challenging innovators to improve the facemask on football helmets to reduce concussions in the game. The league announced on Friday at an innovation summit for the Super Bowl the next round in the HealthTECH Challenge series, a crowdsourced competition designed to accelerate the development of cutting-edge football helmets and new standards for player safety. The challenge invites inventors, engineers, startups, academic teams and established companies to improve the impact protection and design of football helmets through improvements to how facemasks absorb and reduce the effects of contact on the field. "We're trying to get this out through all the channels we typically do to try to engage, not necessarily the helmet industry alone, but engineers, engineering schools, people involved in material science and others," Jeff Miller, the NFL's executive vice president overseeing player health and safety, said at the innovation summit. "They might have different ideas around architecture, might have different idea around materials. Participate in this, make your ideas win a prize. I hope, like we've done in the past, that this is going to advance the thinking." Most progress on helmet safety has come from improvements to the shell and padding, helping to reduce the overall rate of concussions. Working with the helmet industry, the league has brought in position-specific helmets, with those for quarterbacks, for example, having more padding in the back after data showed most concussions for QBs came when the back of the head slammed to the turf. But the facemask has mostly remained the same. This past season, 44% of in-game concussions resulted from impact to the player's facemask, up from 29% in 2015, according to data gathered by the NFL. "What we haven't seen over that period of time are any changes of any note to the facemask," Miller said. "As a football fan, if you look back five or seven years ago, it looks exactly the same as it was before. It's made up of the same materials. ... Now we see, given the changes in our concussion numbers and injuries to players, that as changes are made to the helmet, fewer and fewer concussions are caused by hits to the shell, and more and more concussions as a percentage are by hits to the facemask." Arik Armstead, an 11-year veteran defensive lineman, was also part of the panel and said he welcomed change. Armstead recently changed helmets to a model deemed safer by testing. "This is awesome," he said. "I think a lot is happening in our approach to improving these things. A challenge like this is amazing because you're bringing solicited, new creative minds into the process. ... Let's bring some different brains and minds into the equation and see what could be possible. I think it's really cool." Selected winners will receive up to $100,000 in aggregate funding, as well as expert development support to help move their concepts from the lab to the playing field. The winner will be picked in August and Miller said he expected helmet manufacturers to start implementing any improvements into helmets soon after that.