Country’s leading CTE expert says Guardian Caps aren’t safe for youth football

Just eight days after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law requiring youth football leagues to allow players to wear soft-shell helmet covers on their head, a prominent neurologist has called into question the science that has fueled their popularity, with particular concerns focused on the youth level.

Read more Mother of teen girl whose baby was found dead arrested in Monterey County

Soft-shell helmet covers for football are certainly having a moment. Not only did Newsom sign the aforementioned Assembly bill, but on that same day, Guardian Sports — the brand that makes the eponymous caps for every level of football, including the NFL — announced Saints wide receiver Chris Olave would be an official signature athlete. Olave, one of the league’s best receivers this season, has been the most prominent athlete to use the Guardian Cap in games since the NFL allowed them in the 2024 season. They’ve been presented, particularly by the league, as an innovation in cranial safety that can reduce player concussions by about 50%.

But that’s not the opinion of Christopher Nowinski, a neurologist who is widely considered the preeminent expert on chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, and concussions in football. A former college football player, Nowinski has made his career focus the study of brain injuries in sports and even founded the Concussion & CTE Foundation. As a guest on the latest episode of the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast on Tuesday, Nowinski made it clear he believes that the safety these caps purportedly provide is overstated.

“How do I say this concisely? Much of this Guardian helmet story appears to be a bit of a scam,” Nowinski told host Pablo Torre.

Nowinski dismisses the premise of the Guardian Cap, which is basically that more padding on a helmet is the answer to protecting a player’s brain in the long run. In fact, he argues, a Guardian Cap could cause more problems in some circumstances as it creates a larger radius on the helmet, causing bigger rotational forces to affect the brain after a head collision. Nowinski then notes that the Guardian Cap sold to players at the youth and high school level, called the XT, is not the same one that the NFL uses, which is the NXT model, because the league thought the XT was not good enough.

“And apparently nobody realizes that what the NFL players are wearing, that is OK in lab tests, is different than what your high school players are wearing, which doesn’t work in lab tests,” he said. “So there’s 500,000 Guardian Caps that’s been sold to high school and college players and youth players that … get a 2% reduction in rotational acceleration, the thing that we think is most correlated with CTE. So Guardian Caps don’t work in high school, they might work in the NFL a little bit, but what’s been most fascinating is that their ability to confuse the public that what the NFL is wearing and mandates is safer, is what the kids are getting. It’s not.”

(Guardian Sports says on its website that the NXT is “designed for college and professional athletes,” not youth players, but the model is only available for purchase through a Guardian sale representative, with a minimum purchase of 20.)

Read more Central Calif. poaching bust uncovers bear meat and nearly 1,000 illegal bass

Torre later spells out the situation as such: “So the kids got the thing that the NFL said, ‘That’s not good enough.’ And the thing that NFL players get is, even in that way, not good enough.” Nowinski then responds, “When we’re talking about, ‘Is the Guardian Cap going to stop CTE cases?’ No.”

It’s quite a stark difference from what bill author Assemblymember Avelino Valencia said in a statement released by Newsom’s office.

“Soft-shell helmet add-ons provide an additional layer of protection and are already used at the collegiate and professional levels, including the NFL,” Valencia said. “Parents should have the ability to choose this technology for their children, regardless of where they play, especially during these critical years of cognitive development.”

The new law doesn’t demand or require football players to wear additional protection on the football field — it simply says leagues and organizations have to allow parents of football players the chance to let their kids wear them if they want to do so. But to hear Nowinski tell it, parents may want to do more research on whether these helmet add-ons are the best way to maximize their child’s safety on the football field.