I wouldn’t trust the NFL as far as I could throw a football, so excuse my cynicism.
The most unethical sports league on the planet announced that its players will be able to choose between 12 new helmets next season. Five of the new helmets, we are told by the league and the NFL Players Association, “performed better in laboratory tests” than any helmet that has ever been worn in the NFL. Quarterbacks will be able to choose choice a helmet made by Vicis and another one made by Riddell designed specifically to reduce a quarterback’s head trauma from hitting the ground, the cause of most quarterback concussions. Other positions have their own specially-designed helmets to choose from.
The NFL first introduced position-specific helmets in 2022 for linemen. So far all of the new “safer” helmets are voluntary (except in practice games) and players have not been enthusiastic. The NFL also provides optional “guardian caps,” soft shell covers on top of helmets that provide extra cushioning and enhanced safety for head-to-head contact. These have no been popular with players, perhaps because they look like that thing above.
The NFL and the NFLPA now distribute a poster illustrating how helmets rank based on their performance in lab tests. This season there will be three individual posters , one for offensive linemen, defensive linemen and quarterbacks, supposedly to educate players about their helmet choices.
Now comes the cynicism: why is this so complicated? Why is the choice of helmets left to the players? Why aren’t the safest helmets mandatory during the season? Imagine a seat belt law that gave motorists a choice of a dozen different seat belts, with the option to choose none at all also being in the mix.
It looks to me like a lawyer-devised strategy to reduce the league’s liability for CTE cases. If a player sticks with the old-fashioned helmet and ends up with IQ of a summer sausage in his fifties, the NFL can claims that it was assumption of the risk.
____________
Ethics Alarms 
The CTE thing will not be fixed by helmets that can better withstand impact, but by helmets that discourage head hits. If they were really serious about it they’d go back to thin leather helmets, and I assure you not one player would be hitting anyone with their head. Rugby players may get all sorts of injuries, but CTE is not one of them, and most of them play without helmets.
that is the irony: the effort to protect players from injury has increased the level of injuries by making the players feel invulnerable.
go back to the 20’s or 30’s and injuries would go down because you know that , if you hit him hard, you’ll feel it.
-Jut
I read an article claiming a similar phenomenon exists in boxing. The gloves protect your hands, so you can punch harder, but they don’t protect the person being hit. Hence boxers still get concussions.
the only rebuttal I would have to that is that boxing gloves probably lessen the bleeding.
if you get punched in the head, you might get a concussion, but you won’t get bruised or bloodied on the outside.
cuz that’s yucky.
-Jut
The helmet issue is rife with subplots, including: