Over the past decade, football has come under increasing scrutiny as the connection between playing and degenerative brain disorders like CTE has become more pronounced.
Last year, there were 281 concussions in the NFL, the most in any season since the league began sharing data on concussions in 2012.
At the same time, there's been a small but visible decrease in participation in youth football.
That's where a Plymouth-based company called Corsair Innovations comes in.
It's developing an invention by a pair of UMASS Dartmouth professors called Fiber Energy Absorption Material - or FEAM - that it wants to put into football helmets to better protect from harmful hits.
"It is a one hundred percent textile, energy-absorbing material that's different from anything on the market," said president and founder Bill Lyndon.
Unlike foam padding now in most helmets, Lyndon says FEAM uses thousands of fibers that flex and sheer to redirect energy from hits.
The fibers that make up FEAM are layered between two pieces of textile.
"I call it a fiber sandwich," Lyndon said. "So the fibers stand up straight and they absorb when they're directly hit and they also redirect that harmful rotational force when they're hit at an angle."
Looking at the light and bendable FEAM strip, you'd be surprised it's at the cutting edge of football tech. But the numbers bear it out so far: Sander Reynolds, vice president of product development at Corsair Innovations, said there's been a ten percent difference between FEAM and other materials subjected to drop tests that measure impact.
"10 percent doesn't sound like much on a linear drop. That's gigantic. That's the difference between getting a concussion or not getting a concussion in a lot of cases," Reynolds said.
He also said it's a more affordable option than most other padding systems right now.
"It's an easier solution to put in, it's a cheaper system to put in, so it could go down into lower end helmets, or mid-range helmets, and be able to provide more protection to a larger audience," Reynolds said.
Sander said early tests also show FEAM can perform 20 to 25 percent better than traditional materials on glancing hits.
While the material is still new, Corsair Innovations isn't the only one buying into it. The NFL has invested nearly half a million dollars into the company's research.
And other major sports are already testing the material. This season, baseball plate umpires started putting FEAM in their ball caps to help protect from accidental impacts with bats and balls.
Despite what seem to be steps forward in safety, however, experts warn there is no cure-all.
Robert Cantu is a clinical professor of neurology and neurosurgery at Boston University - and the co-founder of BU's CTE Center. He said helmets can only do so much.
"Building a better helmet's a meritorious effort. I support it completely. Do I think it will ever eliminate concussions? No," Cantu said.
He said while the effort to produce safer helmets has value, no helmet can eliminate what are called sub-concussive hits, which research shows are what really affect the brains of former football players.
"You've got individuals...colliding head to head...with tremendous mass, tremendous force behind the blow. So that no matter how good the helmet is, there's going to be a very violent, rapid movement of the head that's being struck," he explained. "And that shaking, or changing velocity of the head is what sets up the sheer injuries that we see with concussion."
Meanwhile, football remains the most popular sport in America. Thirty-seven percent of U.S. adults picked it as their favoritesport to watch. So, the games will go on. Corsair hopes to get its Fiber Energy Absorption Material - FEAM - into NFL helmets by next season, and on a readily available commercial product by 2020, saying that while they can't make the game completely safe, they can at least reduce the risk.
"Yes, there still is more improvement to go, but...the last 10 years, the helmet change in terms of size and in terms of protection has improved by leaps and bounds," Reynolds said.
