Photo: Getty Images
The National Football League will make a new helmet made specifically to protect quarterbacks available for the position during the upcoming 2023 season, according to NFL.com's Judy Battista.
The Zero2 Matrix QB helmet, which was produced by VCIS, is designed to help quarterback's heads on hits to the ground amid an 18% rise in diagnosed concussions league-wide, which includes a significant margin at the quarterback position. The new helmet has already undergone lab testing in simulated situations in which a quarterback would experience concussion-causing impacts, the NFL confirmed in a memo.
"Players are understandably slow to change equipment they are comfortable with. But in the latest rankings of helmets produced by the NFL and NFLPA, the top three were two helmets designed for linemen, followed by the QB helmet. Innovation is coming fast," Battista tweeted.
Helmet-to-ground impact accounts for about half of the diagnosed concussions at the quarterback position, according to Dr. Ann Bailey Good, a mechanical engineer for Biocore, which has been running the lab tests on the Zero2 Matrix QB helmet. Good said the new helmet was 7% more effective at reducing impact severity than the most popular helmet worn by NFL quarterbacks in 2022.
"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, via NFL.com. "This past year we had an increase in the number of quarterback concussions, and it was the same helmet-to-ground dynamic. Many people would say it's because quarterbacks are scrambling more often, but we didn't see that. It was still the quarterback in the pocket, getting hit and the head hitting the ground as they were holding onto the ball."
More position-specific helmets are expected to be introduced "in the next few years," according to Battista, who predicted wide receivers and defensive backs would "probably" be "next."
"They don't get as many hits as linemen or get slammed into the ground like QBs. But the hits they sustain usually come at high speed," Battista tweeted.