When players take the field at the start of the NFL season, many will be sporting the new, subtly different F7 Pro helmet, which some have speculated might be the safest one football has ever seen. That’s significant for a sport that, over the past two decades, has become as well known for concussions as end zone celebrations. Schutt Sports, which makes the F7 Pro, claims that 35 percent of active NFL athletes have already adopted the helmet.
Football is a sport with a traditionalist bent, particularly when it comes to this piece of gear. Case in point: one of Schutt’s longtime users, Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. The Schutt model he had worn for several years — the Schutt Air XP Pro Q11 LTD — was just banned by the NFL for failing its increasingly stringent safety standards, and he’s been struggling to adapt to an updated version — the Schutt Air XP Pro VTD II — saying that it “looks like a spaceship.” (He wasn’t a fan of the F7 Pro, either.)
“There’s a limit to how big a helmet can be before players won’t adopt it because you’ll feel like you look more like a bobble head.”
Jason Neubauer, chief innovation officer for Certor Sports (parent company of the Schutt and VICIS brands), explains that novelty doesn’t appear to be as important in football as it is in the other (mostly extreme) sports that he has worked in.
“I’ve only designed sporting goods for over 25 years and in almost every other sporting goods product that I’ve ever been involved in, everybody wants the new thing,” Neubauer says. “But in the football helmet industry, that’s kind of the opposite. Usually if you bring out a completely new football helmet that’s never been seen before and it looks totally different, it usually takes two or three years for it really to hit its stride.”
The Schutt F7 Pro. Image: Certor Sports
The Schutt F7 Pro is being introduced to the game after a banner year for the NFL, at least as far as concussions and lower extremity injuries are concerned. It reported a 17 percent reduction in the concussion rate for the 2024 season across all practices and games. This brought the number of concussions to an all-time low since the league first began tracking the phenomenon in 2015, after it spent years denying the problem and refusing to compensate players harmed during their careers.
The reduction in concussions cannot solely — or even chiefly — be attributed to improvements in helmet technology. Last year, the NFL changed the kickoff rules, a play in which many athletes got concussed. It also mandated the wearing of Guardian caps, which are fitted over helmets, in practices for certain positions. (A handful of helmet models, including the top two new Schutt ones, don’t require the use of a cap in practice.) Add to that improved education and a better concussion protocol and injury tracking. Helmets are but one piece in the overall concussion mitigation puzzle.
But it’s the most visible one. A football helmet is more than a protective layer over the player’s head. It has come to symbolize the game itself. Old Monday night football promos show animations of two helmets emblazoned with the logos of the two opposing teams, crashing into each other, head on, nary a ball in sight.
“Every other sport, it’s something part of the gameplay. It’s the bat or the mitt or the ball in baseball. It’s the ball in basketball. It’s the stick and puck in hockey. It’s never the safety device [that’s] the symbol of the game the way it is in American football,” Noah Cohan, a professor of American studies at Washington University who is working on a history of the helmet, points out.
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