In-Game Use of Guardian Caps Will Test the NFL’s Tough-It-Out Culture

Will the protective helmet covers catch on or will players fail to take advantage of a device that could help reduce head trauma?

We have gotten used to seeing Guardian Caps in practices, but they have been approved for in-game use in 2024. / Ethan Miller/Getty Images

John Olerud is a former first baseman who has won a pair of World Series rings, was named to two All-Star teams and won three Gold Glove awards during his 16-year MLB career. He’s comfortable with that information coheadlining the other most notable aspect of his playing time: that he wore a batting helmet while in the field on defense and was, to his knowledge, the only player to have regularly done so.

Diagnosed with a subarachnoid hemorrhage at Washington State after he collapsed during a preseason workout in 1989, Olerud was advised to wear the helmet upon his return to play. But even after the doctors said the helmet was no longer necessary, he fell back on a truism we all should learn at some point in life: When it comes to getting hit in the head, less is better.

“Early on in my career, people thought I was a batboy,” Olerud says, laughing. “But I felt like if it does provide some protection, it’s worth it.”

Olerud was teased by some fans, most of whom would remind him, “Hey, you forgot to take off your helmet!” Once, on an off day in the bigs, he was flung from a horse during an outing with a few players and one of his teammates casually mentioned, “It’s the one dang time he doesn’t have a helmet on.”

Other than that, the helmet and the reaction to him wearing it did not faze him. “I didn’t think too much about it,” he says. “It didn’t take too long to get used to. A little later in my career I would take my helmet with me for baseball card photos. It was a part of me.”

Olerud willingly sacrificed a bit of vanity for an increased measure of safety, which is why his perspective is valuable during an offseason of change in the NFL. For the first time, players are allowed to wear Guardian Caps in games after being required to do so during contact drills in practice last season. Guardian Caps, for the uninitiated, are a closed cell foam protector that snaps over a player’s helmet and helps reduce impact by blunting the force of hits and redirecting the impact around the head. Guardian Sports, the company that makes the caps, claims that they reduce impact similar to a soft wall around a NASCAR track. The head force mitigation device has been studied since 2011 and used on-field for more than a decade. Guardian Caps are now utilized in hockey and lacrosse as well. Several high schools have mandated the use of the caps in practice for their players.

Olerud wore a batting helmet in the field throughout his MLB career. / Robert Beck/Sports Illustrated

And while Guardian Sports cofounders Erin and Lee Hanson explicitly mention that they cannot market them as concussion-reduction devices—“you cannot make anyone concussion proof, period,” Erin says—the implication is obvious. Less force to the head could mean less trauma. (While Guardian Caps have been shown to reduce impact severity in laboratory settings, peer-reviewed studies have yet to replicate those results on the football field.) Anecdotally, the league has reported fewer practice concussions since adopting the Guardian Cap. Many high school and college coaches swear by its effectiveness.

The problem? Some feel it doesn’t look cool, that it doesn’t jibe with the league’s archaic warrior ethos. Former NFL offensive tackle King Dunlap said on a podcast that players should “raw dog the helmet and get CTE like the rest of us.” Jon Feliciano, a 49ers guard, tweeted, “Y’all mfers better not be wearing guardian caps.”

Meanwhile, former NFL MVP Cam Newton was asked on his podcast if he would wear the Guardian Cap if he’d had the chance. His response?

“Hell, yeah,” Newton said. “You ever got concussed?”

Former Rams offensive tackle Jack Youngblood played in the 1979 postseason (and Pro Bowl) with a broken leg. Ronnie Lott had his pinkie amputated in 1986 so he wouldn’t miss any time recovering from a bone graft. For some, being physical in head-to-head combat, while ill-advised, is part of the game. “We understand how players feel about the look of things,” Erin says. “We never set out for game play. We just thought if we could take off some impact during the week of practice, that’s a win.”

While the company is working on a more streamlined version of its product, this season’s in-game cap will look a bit like someone throwing a practice pinny over a jersey. In essence, there will be a thin covering over the cap that mimics the team’s helmet color scheme and logo. But because Guardian Caps were approved for game use so late in the process, the company could not get a newer prototype approved in time to fit the contours of every NFL helmet properly and accentuate each logo. It’s easy, for instance, to design a Guardian Cap with an added piece of padding large enough to neatly display the 49ers’ oval logo. It’s harder to design one that can fit over the Bengals’ tiger-striped helmet without looking ridiculous.

The NFL officially notified Guardian Sports of its approval for on-field use of the caps in February. By March, the company had the pinny-style cover-up sent to Colorado and longtime client Georgia for spring practice as a kind of testing ground.

The Hanson family has since discovered just how finicky not only NFL players are about looking suave in a helmet, but also how specific teams are when it comes to the precise appearance of their helmets—and how demanding current NFL-approved helmet companies are about protecting their own visibility. “For all 32 teams we’re in the process of supplementing caps for all their primary helmets, secondary helmets, adding flags on the back, decals, this special thing, that special thing, making their red look more maroon, making the sparkly helmet look more sparkly,” Erin says. 

As of now, the Hanson family has no idea how many players will actually wear the caps. Each NFL team has at least 50 on hand. The onus is now on the players and their own exploration of personal vanity, safety and what crosses the fine line between what is football and what is not.

For what it’s worth, Olerud, now 56, has no regrets.

“There’s that tough guy image, everyone wants to be the next Dick Butkus, this beast of a guy on the field,” he says. “So the safety stuff goes against that mentality. But it’s definitely in a player’s best interest.”