Overdue in his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, tight end Indianapolis Colts quarterback Kylen Granson caught a miniature pass up the middle, lunged forward and lowered his body to prepare for contact. The side of his helmet hit linebacker Quay Walker’s mask, and the back hit the ground as Walker wrestled with him. Getting up after the 9-yard gain, Granson threw the ball to the official and returned to the line of scrimmage for the next snap.
Besides being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, the otherwise ordinary play was notable only for what Granson was wearing at the time of the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-padded protective helmet called the Guardian. Hat.
These gentle shells, already mandatory for most positions in all NFL preseason practices, as well as during contact practices during the regular season and postseason, received another vote of confidence this year when the league gave them the green airy for optional employ in games, citing an approximately 50 percent reduction in training camp concussions from its official debut in 2022. Through six weeks of play this fall, only 10 NFL players took the field with one on the field, according to a league spokesman. But the decision was effortless for Granson, who tried out his Guardian Cap, covered with a 1-ounce pinnie with the Colts logo simulating the look of a helmet underneath, in preseason games before deciding to wear it for real.
“I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t affect me at all,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before the Week 2 game against the Packers. “I thought, even if it looks a little silly, it’s worth it.”
The goofy aesthetic of fluffy, fluffy Guardian Hats can’t be ignored. The product’s parent company, Guardian Sports, even has T-shirts for employees that say: LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, HAVE FUN – with LOOK GOOD crossed out. “Condom caps, mushroom caps – we’ve heard them all,” says Erin Hanson, co-founder of Guardian Sports with her husband Lee Hanson. “We just laugh because we agree.”
It’s challenging to come to terms with the fact that the apparent future of football headgear looks like something out of a 1960s sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are currently even allowed in NFL games, a league known for controlling every inch equipment for players to protect their image – not only speaks to their lab-proven usefulness (even if published, verified field data is still lacking). It also reflects the urgency of the moment for football in general.
The dangers of wearing a helmet have never been more obvious, given the link between repeated blows to the head – whether or not they caused a concussion – and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (also known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with cognitive problems such as depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed posthumously) . Not coincidentally, the race to find answers has become faster and more lucrative than ever before, between the NFL’s private research funding and the rapidly innovating football headgear industry.
And at the center of it all, on sports’ biggest stage, is literally a mom and pop store that, less than a decade and a half ago, was struggling to gain a foothold in soccer, and not for fun.