Growing up, I used to have those "head across" tackles.
I used to get my bell rung.
I was asking, "Coach, what happened?"
This is Scott Lawyer.
He started playing football when he was 10 years old,
and continued into college.
When he says "getting your bell rung,"
he means getting a concussion.
It's a term you hear all of the time in football because, well,
concussions are kind of common.
At its worst, the latest studies show repeated brain trauma causes a sometimes-fatal condition
called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
The research has some prominent neurologists saying
that there's no safe way to play tackle football.
And it's forced the NFL to look for ways to make
the most popular sport in the US safer.
You don't have to go too far to know somebody that is
concerned about their kid playing football,
because of this safety issue, and this concussion and CTE issue.
Karen Bryant is the CEO of Atavus, where Scott works.
The company wants to change how football players tackle.
Atavus is part of a boutique industry that's emerged in recent years,
of companies aiming to improve the sport.
We believe that the long-term impact,
the biggest impact, is to focus on changing behavior,
changing behavior of coaches, changing the approach of coaches,
and ultimately changing the way players tackle,
and the way they're taught to tackle.
Here's how it works.
Notice how Scott pushes off his right foot
and strikes with his right shoulder.
He uses the same foot and shoulder to maintain momentum,
while keeping his head out of play.
This is what it looks like in a game,
in a commercial the NFL made, calling the tackle "the future of football."
'There's no head involved in these tackles at all.'
'We think it's safer.'
For comparison, this is what a normal, non-Atavus tackle looks like.
You grow up with the style of head-across,
it's hard to get that out of your mind.
But that muscle memory from Atavus, and the strategic
and the systematic approach we take really helps players have that muscle memory,
really feel it come second nature to them.
A handful of major colleges, and one pro team, have adopted this brand of tackling.
But Atavus has only been around since 2013.
And they're still gathering data to test whether their tackle is safer.
Even if it is, sometimes players will still get hit in the head.
That's something other startups, like this company, Vicis, are trying to address.
Vicis got a grant from the NFL to try to build a better helmet.
Our focus is just building a helmet
that reduces impact forces.
Traditional helmets have a hard plastic shell
and some sort of padding on the inside.
Our helmet actually deforms, or yields upon impact,
like a car bumper would,
and in doing so, it slows impact forces before they can reach the head.
Depending on the location, we can reduce those impact forces by 40% or so.
More than 20 college teams, and at least a dozen NFL teams,
will have players wearing the zero-one in 2018.
But, like Atavus, their work is so new
that they don't have the data to show whether their helmets prevent CTE.
We don't make any claims about our helmets' ability to reduce concussion risk or CTE risk.
What we do do, is we say, "Here's the data:
Our helmet reduces impact forces more effectively than other helmets."
These startups are a step in the right direction,
but most experts say improving tackles and helmets alone
won't eliminate concussions from the game.
When you're hit here, your neck starts moving.
And it whips the brain around.
And that's what I believe, and
I think a lot of other people believe,
causes concussions.
So if you want to eliminate concussions,
you need to do something
about the neck movement.
Dr. Jam Ghajar is the director of Stanford University's
Concussion and Brain Performance Center,
and a professor of neurosurgery.
He says a lot of research suggests that the sudden rotation of the skull
is what most damages the brain,
even if the head is protected.
Ghajar says solving this would make a lot of sports safer. Not just football.
It'll be a very small device linking the back of the neck.
And it'll prevent this this certain kind of motion that's producing concussions.
And that'll be the cure.
And then you can do all these sports, even martial arts and boxing,
and you'll have a dramatic decrease in concussions,
better brain health, better performance.
It's all that, but we have to we have to understand what the problem is first.
He believes we're working towards a future where playing America's favorite sport
won't mean putting your brain at risk.
But we've still got a long way to go.
Something has to change. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anybody—
layperson, hardcore football fan—that wouldn't acknowledge that something has to give.
So, whether the word drastic is appropriate or not, don't know.
Can't comment on, sort of, how drastic that change might be.
But something has to change.