As NFL touts new helmet safety, there still is no answer why Patrick Mahomes’ cracked
The NFL boasted this week about improved helmet safety for its players, with the league and the NFL players’ association announcing the results of tests done on helmets.
“Five new helmets for the 2024 season ... tested better than any helmet ever worn in the league, reflecting a significant advancement in helmet safety innovation,” the NFL said in a news release. “In total, a record 12 new helmet models are eligible for players to wear for the 2024 season.”
There also will be eight new helmets this season that are specific to a player’s position.
The NFL and NFLPA puts helmets through laboratory testing overseen by “biomechanical experts to evaluate which helmets best reduce head impact severity,” the league said.
Here are results of the testing, which also includes helmets that are now prohibited.
Near the top of the safest helmets is the VICIS Zero2 helmet. That’s the one Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was wearing in January during the Chiefs’ 26-7 win over the Dolphins in an AFC Wild Card game.
The game was the fourth-coldest in NFL history with a temperature of minus-4 at kickoff with a wind chill factor of minus-27. Mahomes said following the win that the helmet did its job in protecting him, and the company that made the helmet agreed.
The NFL took the helmet for testing to determine why it cracked.
But three months later there are no answers.
“The helmet is still undergoing materials science testing but beyond that nothing more specific to share at this time,’’ the NFL’s Stef Goodsell wrote in an email to The Star.
ESPN’s Kevin Seifert reported Mahomes’ cracked helmet could result in a change. “New testing procedures could emerge as a result,” Seifert wrote, “in addition to some different game-day protocols.”
Goodsell couldn’t confirm if the helmet will be returned to Mahomes, but he said in January he wants it.
“They’re testing it right now, but I’m adamant on getting the helmet after,” Mahomes said. “It’s definitely something that’s cool, that I’ll be able to keep for a long time.”
