NFL launches global contest to redesign facemasks as impacts drive more concussions

A small piece of gear, a growing problem

On the Friday before Super Bowl LX, in a San Francisco hotel ballroom filled with engineers, entrepreneurs and league officials, the National Football League put a familiar but often overlooked piece of equipment under the spotlight: the facemask.

The league says nearly half of all in-game concussions last season involved an impact to the bars that extend in front of a player’s face—a component of the helmet that has changed relatively little even as shells and padding have rapidly evolved.

Now the NFL is offering funding and access to its research partners in hopes that outside innovators can redesign that hardware.

HealthTECH Challenge II: what the NFL is seeking

Announced Feb. 6 at the Bay Area Host Committee Super Bowl LX Innovation Summit in San Francisco, the NFL’s new HealthTECH Challenge II is a global competition aimed at improving how facemasks and related helmet components manage impact. The initiative is part of the league’s broader player health and safety program and comes after several seasons of declining concussion numbers.

“The rapid rate of innovation in helmet technology reflects how research and data can directly improve the level of safety across football,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president overseeing player health and safety, said in a statement. “These challenges have raised the standard of equipment to help reduce concussions and mitigate the effects of head impacts.”

The competition invites inventors, engineers, startups, academic teams and established companies to submit ideas that could be built into future NFL helmets. Proposals can focus on:

• New facemask and connector designs
• Advanced energy-absorbing materials and structures
• Improved helmet retention systems, such as chin straps

Timeline, judging, and prize funding

Submissions are open now and due by May 28 at 5 p.m. Eastern. The league and its partners plan a webinar for prospective applicants on March 3 to walk through requirements and answer questions.

Entries will be evaluated by Duke University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering and an expert panel convened with Football Research, Inc., a league-funded nonprofit that manages the NFL’s engineering roadmap.

Winners are expected to be selected in August. The league says chosen teams will receive up to $100,000 in aggregate funding, plus technical support to advance designs from concept to prototype and, potentially, to on-field use.

Why the facemask is now a target

The focus on facemasks reflects a shift in where head injuries are coming from, based on the league’s own tracking.

For the 2025 season, the NFL said 44% of in-game concussions resulted from an impact to the player’s facemask, up from 29% in 2015. Over roughly the same period, the league has funded significant improvements in helmet shells, liners and padding through its multiyear, multimillion-dollar Engineering Roadmap and earlier HeadHealthTECH challenges.

League officials say those programs, combined with stricter concussion protocols and rule changes targeting dangerous plays, have contributed to a decline in diagnosed concussions. The NFL reported that concussions across the 2024 preseason and regular season fell 17% compared with 2023 and 12% compared with the 2021–23 average, reaching what it described as a historic low.

But as shell performance has improved, a growing proportion of remaining concussions have been linked to the front of the helmet.

“Recent efforts to improve shell impact technology have been incredibly fruitful, and now we look forward to evaluating this next wave of creative solutions to facemasks and other helmet components with the goal of further reducing injury,” Miller said.

Design tradeoffs: protection, weight, and visibility

Equipment experts say redesigning the facemask is complicated. The structure must be rigid enough to protect the face from fingers, cleats and other hard surfaces, while remaining light enough not to strain the neck or significantly alter the helmet’s balance. It also has to maintain ventilation and clear sightlines for players.

Any new materials must withstand extreme weather and repeated impacts without shattering or deforming into sharp edges.

The league’s call for entries specifically mentions energy-absorbing materials, multi-stage connectors that change how force is transmitted from the facemask to the shell, and improved retention systems that could help control how the head moves inside the helmet during a hit.

Part of a broader safety strategy

HealthTECH Challenge II builds on a decade of NFL-backed competitions. Earlier HeadHealthTECH challenges, run with Duke and other partners, funded early-stage helmet concepts and impact-monitoring technologies, some of which evolved into models ranked among the highest performing in the NFL and NFL Players Association’s joint helmet testing program.

In 2023, the league launched HealthTECH Challenge I, which shifted focus from helmets to the playing surface, seeking ideas to make fields safer and more consistent. It offered a similar total prize pool of $100,000 and is still in the implementation and evaluation phase.

The new facemask competition also comes after the widespread adoption of Guardian Caps, soft-shell covers worn over helmets during practices. The NFL has said its research shows those devices can reduce the force of impacts by about 10% when one player in a collision wears one and about 20% when both do. Initially mandated for certain positions during training camp, Guardian Caps have been allowed in regular-season games on an optional basis since 2024.

Defensive lineman Arik Armstead, who has played for the San Francisco 49ers, praised the focus on equipment when speaking about the challenge at the Super Bowl summit, saying players benefit when “creative people are thinking about ways to protect us.”

What equipment can—and can’t—do

Independent medical experts generally welcome improvements in helmet technology but caution that no equipment can fully prevent brain injury in a sport built on high-speed contact. Researchers studying chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, have increasingly focused on the cumulative effect of repetitive head impacts, including those that do not cause diagnosed concussions.

Some leagues have responded with changes that go beyond equipment. Soccer authorities in England, for example, have begun restricting heading in youth games and limiting the number of high-force headers in training for older players in an attempt to reduce lifetime exposure.

The NFL has instituted its own set of non-equipment measures in recent years, including moving the kickoff line and changing return rules to reduce high-speed collisions, expanding the definition and enforcement of hits on defenseless players, and placing independent spotters in stadiums with authority to remove players for evaluation.

League officials present HealthTECH Challenge II as another component of a layered approach that combines rules, culture, medical care and technology.

“The goal of these efforts is to continue to drive down injuries while preserving the essential elements of the game,” Miller said.

Skepticism and downstream impact

Critics of the league’s handling of head trauma have argued that high-profile technology initiatives can also serve a public relations function by signaling action in the wake of past litigation and scrutiny. The NFL reached a landmark settlement with thousands of former players in 2013 over concussion-related claims, and the issue remains a factor in collective bargaining talks with the NFLPA.

At the same time, safety investments can have practical implications beyond the league. High school and youth football programs often adopt equipment that first appears in the NFL, as manufacturers bring new designs to broader markets. If the facemask challenge leads to changes that measurably reduce impact forces, those could eventually show up on fields far from the Super Bowl.

Any winning concepts will still have to navigate a lengthy process: laboratory testing, integration with existing helmets, review by the league and the players union, and then team-level decisions about which models to approve and stock. Some players may be slow to adopt unfamiliar gear, as seen with early reactions to new helmet shapes and Guardian Caps.

For now, the work is in the proposal stage. Ideas submitted over the coming months will be sifted by engineers at Duke and independent biomechanical experts before the NFL and Football Research, Inc., decide which to fund.

The announcement in San Francisco was overshadowed by the buildup to Sunday’s championship game. But the contest to rethink the bars in front of players’ faces—a few inches of metal and plastic that have quietly become a major source of concussions—may ultimately prove more consequential than anything on the scoreboard.