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What’s with those bobblehead NFL helmets?

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What’s with those bobblehead NFL helmets?

If you’ve been watching the NFL this season, you’ve probably noticed that a few dozen players have pretty big heads. Not in the diva sense, but literally.

Take Chris Olave, the New Orleans Saints wide receiver. He wears a Guardian Cap, a padded cover on his helmet for added protection against head trauma. The trade-off is that it makes him look like he just nabbed a mushroom power-up in Super Mario. Olave, who suffered four concussions in his first three NFL seasons, has made peace with that. “Shoot, I got kids now,” he said after the Saints’ season opener. “I want to live a regular life after I’m done with football. I love my kids to death. So, I don’t really care how it looks no more.”

The NFL has spent the past decade trying to bring its concussion numbers down, with mixed results. In-game concussions fell 15% to 129 in the 2024 regular season, then jumped 30% to 168 last year. Much of that increase came on kickoffs, where a new format designed to bring back more returns sent concussions on the play from 8 in 2024 to 35 in 2025.

Since 2022, when the league made it mandatory in practice, the Guardian Cap has been the NFL’s most noticeable safety measure. It has been optional in games since 2024, and after a design refresh this offseason, it’s showing up on game days more than ever.

The cap is made by Guardian Sports, a Georgia company run by Lee and Erin Hanson, a husband and wife whose materials business developed custom polyurethane for products like rocket boosters and golf ball covers .


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