NFL Expands Guardian Cap Mandate, Allows In-Game Use for 2024 Season

The NFL has expanded its Guardian Cap mandate once again for the 2024 season to include more positions, as well as giving players the option to the wear the protective headgear in game.

Since the 2022 season, the NFL has mandated the use of the Guardian Cap in practices, but for the 2024 season, defensive backs and receivers have joined the list of positions required to wear Guardian Caps for all contact practices through the post season. Positions mandated to wear the Guardian Cap now include: OL, DL, LB, DB, TE, RB, FB, WR.

Additionally, due to the efficacy of the Guardian Cap in practice, the NFL has now permitted players to wear the Guardian Cap, if they so choose, during games for the 2024-2025 season.

“We’ve got two years of data now showing significant concussion reductions in those players that wear Guardian Caps in the NFL,” Dr. Allen Sills, Chief Medical Officer of the NFL, said during a webinar. “We might actually see a Guardian Cap on a player in a game this year.”

Brendan Burger, equipment director for the Los Angeles Rams said the Guardian Cap has become the norm at NFL practices. 

"The players know the Caps. They’ve seen the data, it works," Sells said. "The Guardian Caps have become another piece of equipment that they take to practice. You think about all the head impacts that we’re reducing from players wearing them and it’s second nature now,” Burger said.

“We have expanded the mandate to all players with the option for quarterback, kicker, and punter.  There is also the option for the player to wear it in the game if he so chooses,” said Dawn Aponte, chief administrator of Football Operations at the NFL.

Guardian Caps offered the following information on the NFL's implementation of the protective gear: 

• The expansion of the mandate of Guardian Caps follows positive data since the implementation two years ago. 
• Data from the 2022 showed the position groups required to wear Guardian Cap during the mandated period in the preseason saw a more than 50% reduction in concussions versus a previous three-year average (2018, 2019, 2021; the anomalous 2020 season is excluded). There was no increase in concussions among the position groups wearing Guardian Caps after the mandated period ended.
• The league's data showed that if one player is wearing the Guardian Cap at the time of a helmet hit, the cap will absorb at least 10  percent of the force. If both players are wearing the cap and have a helmet-to-helmet hit, the force of the impact is reduced by at least  20 percent.
• The NFL reported that Guardian Caps worn during training camp practices in 2023 helped the league realize a seven-year low in training-camp concussions.