DISCLAIMER: This is an update on my previous post “DEFLATE-GATE: THE MEDICAL FIELD VERSUS THE NFL.” To best refresh your knowledge on NFL, concussions, CTE, and the PBS documentary that hit the NFL hard, refer to my previous post before perusing this one.
On September 14, 2016, the NFL launched a website: playsmartplaysafe.com to highlight their involvement in CTE research and detail their efforts in protecting players.
It’s a huge website, packed with lots of info and long articles describing their playbook. I’m going to simplify it for you because who has hours to spend reading every word the NFL has to say about player safety and the research their involved with. Think of this blog like the New York Post: I’m your friend who read everything and now I’m texting you the highlights.
The website is headlined by a letter from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. It’s long. But here are the important points and quotes.
200 million people call themselves football fans–NFL fans. Goodell makes sure to, politely, say “duh it’s a contact sport that’s why people watch. They love seeing the action and the big hits.” In his words: “because on any given game day, something incredible is going to happen.”
This is too true. I mean, even if you don’t watch football, you probably watch The Bachelor to turn to your friend and say “OMG I can’t believe she just threw that drink in that bitch’s face” or if you watch Game of Thrones…well just go to YouTube and watch Seth Myers watch an episode with Leslie Jones: “THE DRAGONS! HERE COME THE DRAGONS!!! OH YEAH BABY!!! BURN THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!”
Well, football fans do the same thing: “Why the FUCK didn’t they just do XYZ? Fucking idiot coach. NO the Patriots are not winning this game are you kidding me? I’ll bet you $50 the Seahawks will crush them.”
Ok so you get the point. Goodell says, in his letter, that the NFL has made significant steps in improving the health and safety of their players: safety-rule changes, advancements in equipment, improved medical protocols, blah blah blah. But then he makes a valid point:
“Rightfully, much of the public discussion is about concussions—how they happen, how they can be prevented and treated and what is known about their long-term impact. That is what I want to focus on here today.
The NFL has been a leader on health and safety in many ways, and we’ve made some real strides in recent years. But when it comes to addressing head injuries in our game, I’m not satisfied, and neither are the owners of the NFL’s 32 clubs. We can and will do better.”
Agreed. So the NFL launched Play Smart. Play Safe: “an initiative to drive progress in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of head injuries, enhance medical protocols and further improve the way the game is taught and played by all who love it,” according to its website.
$200 million: amount the NFL has pledged to research
- $100 million pledged in 2016 to support independent medical research and engineering advancements
- $100 million has already been spent on medical and neuroscience research since 2008
Goodell emphasizes he wants to keep players and the public informed about any efforts or advancements the NFL is making in making the game safer (but really to reduce the incidence of CTE, which has caused a whirlwind of public controversy since 2008–see my previous post.)
The NFL has also:
- Hired a leading physician to serve as Chief Medical Officer of the NFL, who will work full-time with each team’s medical and administrative staff, the medical committees of the NFL and NFL Players Association (NFLPA,) and scientific and medical communities. Goodell states he wants to make sure the NFL has the most up-to-date info to advance research in science and sports medicine for injury prevention, diagnosis, and treatment.
- Established a scientific advisory board (SAB,) composed of leading MDs, scientists, and clinicians to collaborate together to propose ideas for future research into concussions, head injuries and their long-term effects. The SAB is spearheaded by retired US Army General Peter Chiarelli who stated, “Our job is to take a commitment that the NFL has made of $40 million, and help them spend that money wisely,” he said. “To try to produce something that’s going to help us in the area of concussion or traumatic brain injury.”
“As we all learn more about concussions and take further steps to ensure our players are being properly cared for—and properly caring for themselves and their teammates—there may be an increase in reported concussions, as happened last season. So while no one wants to see concussion numbers rise, we firmly believe that more screening, self-reporting and collection of concussion data will inform increasingly reliable preventive measures. This is an important culture change for all of us.”
So the initiative is organized into four pillars:
- Protecting Players
- Advanced Technology
- Medical Research
- Sharing Progress
PROTECTING PLAYERS
“We commit to making changes on and off the field that will protect the health and safety of every player in the NFL.”
This includes 42 rule changes since 2002. Goodell underscores that data will drive future changes in the rule-book and guide potential options that may result in safer play.
Not all changes are just changes during the big games we watch on Sundays and Monday nights. Some include changes to reduce contact during practices.
NFL sidelines now have 29 medical personnel at every game: neurological consultants, trainers, etc.
There’s now a protocol in place to educate players and their teams. Goodell aims to focus on player safety education and ensure they have access to the best available information to protect themselves.
Further, “For the benefit of our retired players, the NFL reached an historic settlement with NFL retirees and their families. The agreement will provide significant monetary awards to former players diagnosed with neurocognitive and neuromuscular impairments, without regard to whether the conditions are related to playing professional football,” which might actually benefit my grandfather (future post.)
ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY
Goodell affirms that he is committed to championing new developments in engineering, biomechanics, advanced sensors and material science that mitigate forces and prevent injuries, including those that occur in the military.
The NFL has allocated $60 million to this effort. Building on the successful model used in the NFL’s Head Health Challenge with GE (scroll to bottom of post to learn more,) the NFL will “continue to crowdsource and support the best ideas from engineering experts around the world so that they can apply their expertise to these challenges.”
OK NOW FOR THE BIG HEADLINER: HELMET ENGINEERING
Goodell writes that better helmets can help tackle the issue of increasing concussion incidences (um obviously.) He references the automobile industry and advanced car safety techniques and suggests that a similar engineering approach could potentially improve helmets within 3-5 years. Sounds pretty good. But, first the inherent problems in current helmet designs must be identified before the marketplace can begin designing solutions.
Now he mentions “position-specific helmets,” which, when I read this, thought: “TOUCHDOWN!” Linemen experience different impacts than a wide receiver who experiences different impacts than a defensive back, and so on. The more data available on injury-producing conditions, and how they vary by position, the more targeted the engineering design of helmets can be. Crandall:
“Given that players experience different types of impacts depending on their position, what we’d ultimately like to do is have helmets that are designed specifically for each position.”
Optimizing and individualizing the design of helmets depending on the player’s position on gameday would be huuuuuge.
How else is the NFL using Biomechanical Research to support improvements in helmet technology?
Well, research with crash-test dummies for one. Biomechanical experts are measuring impacts with special sensors implanted on the dummies and capturing images of the dummies’ motions with high resolution motion cameras. The NFL has just recently committed $60 million to champion engineering success and ensure their advancement to the playoffs.
The NFL has just implemented an Engineering Roadmap (they should’ve called in a playbook don’t ya think?)
“The Roadmap, guided by engineers who advise the NFL and NFL Players Association (NFLPA), is creating incentives—and supplying new data—for sporting goods companies, manufacturers, small businesses, entrepreneurs, universities and others from around the world to develop new and improved helmets and protective equipment.”
Dr. Jeff Crandall, Director of The Center for Applied Biomechanics at The University of Virginia and Chairman of the NFL Engineering Committee, is leading the effort in gathering this data. “We’re going to use the data from these tests to design better laboratory experiments,” he said. “We want to understand the motions, the forces and the accelerations that occur during a game so we can recreate them in the laboratory.”
Forces may result from: helmet-to-helmet impacts, helmet-to-ground impacts, or helmet-to-shoulder impacts.
Researchers are also using computation models of helmets to study their design in precise detail and the exact motions of the head and body during impacts.
Here is the best part: Quanterix, one of the companies that won the first GE-NFL collaborative Head Health Challenge, is in the process of developing a BLOOD TEST to diagnose concussions. How amazing would that be, right? Simply take a vial, send it to the lab, read the report, and decide on a treatment plan? As simply as diagnosing high cholesterol? This would be an absolute win for the NFL and its players. It would be the equivalent of a medical SuperBowl championship ring.
The second GE-NFL collaboration, Under Armour Head Health Challenge, named Viconic as one of its finalists. This company produces an under-layer for artificial turf fields that can absorb a considerably higher amount of force than current fields (think about slamming your head against your wall–which you may occasionally do at home every once in a while after a rough day–versus stuffing your head in a pillow–which I bet more of you do when frustrated. Holes in walls are pricier to fix.) The product is still not available but Goodell reassures us that the company is in its final stages of testing it before it can be made commercially available.
MEDICAL RESEARCH
“We commit to investing in and partnering with preeminent experts and institutions to advance progress in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of head injuries.”
More than $40 million in funding has been allotted by the NFL for medical research over the next five years. The amount is primarily delivered to the field of neuroscience. This is in addition to the $30 million that the NFL has already given to the National Institutes of Health.
Mainly, the NFL wants to examine the long-term effects of concussions, the incidence and prevalence of CTE (read my other post. Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy,) and what the best defensive plays are in slowing the advancement of CTE towards its End Zone.
Goodell acknowledges that debate and disagreement will arise but welcomes both to promote the finding of solutions to optimize player health.
SHARING PROGRESS
Goodell wants to share the NFL’s research and findings to all levels of football and to other sports and to society at large.
“We wholeheartedly believe in the value of young people playing football and other sports. We embrace the opportunity to be leaders in athletic safety. We know that families across America grapple with whether to let their children play football. And we appreciate that there is real concern about tackle football.”
He ends with assuring that the NFL is committed to funding new studies to examine how age, size, cognitive development, and other factors should impact athletic youths.
“Our goal will be to equip parents with the best available information to make decisions about their children’s participation in football and other contact sports.”
Some additional but noteworthy points:
The NFL and Football Research, Inc.—a nonprofit corporation formed and financially supported by the NFL—partnered with Duke University’s Clinical and Translational Science Institute (Duke CTSI) to create the HeadHealthTECH Challenges. TECH Challenge applicants receive constructive feedback from Duke CTSI biomechanical experts to help refine their innovations.
Some examples of winners of these challenges:
- Vyatek Sports received a grant of $190,000 to support development and testing of its Zorbz technology, a series of highly efficient energy-absorbing modules added to a helmet system that can be removed and replaced after a significant impact.
- Windpact received a grant of $148,000 to support prototyping and testing of its Crash Cloud™, an impact liner system using restricted air flow and foam in helmets and protective gear.
Good for you Goodell. Let’s hope we see a a reversal in the increased incidence of concussion observed last season in this year’s season and in the future.
LINKS
Using Biomechanical Research to Support Improvements in Helmet Technology
Pulling the Plug on American Medicine 