Late at his team’s game against the Green Bay Packers on September 15, Indianapolis Colts tight end Kylen Granson caught a short pass in the middle of the field, headed forward, and lowered his body to prepare for contact. The side of his helmet hit linebacker Quay Walker’s face mask, and the back of it hit the ground as Walker tackled him to the ground. Getting to his feet after a 9-yard gain, Granson threw the ball to the official and returned to the line of scrimmage on the next snap.
Despite being his first reception of the 2024 National Football League season, this routine game was notable only for what Granson was wearing during the hit: a 12-ounce, foam-filled, protective cover called the Guardian. Cap.
Already mandatory at most positions throughout the NFL’s preseason practices, as well as regular season and postseason contact practices, these softshells received another vote of confidence this year when the league greenlighted them for optional play, meaning a 50 percent drop. training camp chaos since their official start in 2022. In six weeks of practice this fall, only 10 NFL players have actually stepped on a single field, according to a league spokesman. But the decision was easy for Granson, who tried on his game-day Guardian Cap—itself covered in 1-ounce pin with the Colts logo to mimic the design of the helmet underneath—in preseason games before committing to actually wearing it.
“I was surprised it didn’t affect me at all,” the 26-year-old told WIRED a few days before facing the Packers in week two. “I thought that, even if it looks silly, it’s worth it.”
There is no ignoring the beauty of the puffy, Blobby Guardian Caps. The brand’s parent company, Guardian Sports, has an employee t-shirt that says LOOK GOOD, FEEL GOOD, PLAY GOOD—with LOOK GOOD released. “Condom caps, mushroom heads—we’ve heard it all,” said Erin Hanson, founder of Guardian Sports and her husband, Lee Hanson. “We just laugh, because we agree.”
It can be hard to quantify the fact that the foreseeable future of soccer jerseys looks like something out of a ’60s-era sci-fi movie. But the fact that Guardian Caps are now allowed at all in NFL games—a league known for policing every inch of players’ gear to protect its image—doesn’t speak to lab-tested materials (even if it’s published, peers—locally reviewed data is always lacking). It also shows the urgency of time in football in general.
The dangers of wearing a helmet have never been more clear, given the link between repeated blows to the head-whether it causes a collision or not-and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (known as CTE, a brain disorder associated with mental problems such as depression and progressive dementia that can only be diagnosed after death his). Not coincidentally, the race to find answers is faster and more lucrative than ever, amid the NFL’s funding of independent research efforts and the rapidly developing football headgear industry.
And in the middle of it all, on the biggest stage of all sports, a real mom and pop store, less than a decade and a half ago, that was fighting for a place in football as a joke.
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