Analytics and data collecting spur helmet safety in football
While no one is actually playing football right now, analytics and data collecting are contributing to safety in the sport like at no other time.
Riddell, which topped the recent NFL/NFLPA helmet ratings with three of its models, has dived so deep into the data that it’s discovering previously unexplored information.
Teaming with Catapult, an Australia-based technology company, Riddell is providing coaches, players and medical staff detailed information regarding anything from practice regimens to helmet contacts to overall preparation for athletes.
“In the early part of the product’s launch,” Thad Ide, Riddell’s senior vice president of research and product development says about the company’s InSite tool, “it was more the medical staff and trainers we engaged. Only in the last couple years have we made an effort to engage coaches more because we have this tool. Riddell created a web portal of engagement with coaches, an acting coach outreach program, and even more recently with strength coaches, conditioning coaches — they tend to eat this stuff up. Such as head impact exposure’s relationship to fatigue, and the load on the player — ways we maybe did not even think about.”
Such as a closer look at the ramifications of helmet collisions, at when they occur and who is involved.
“We are not privy to injuries being diagnosed,” Ide adds, “but I think the depth of the analysis is expanding all the time as we bring in-house analytics capabilities to our team. It’s ways of looking at the data differently. We find all sorts of anecdotal things: impacts to the crown of the helmet, for example, and then look at that particular player and his technique.
“You have days when you’re not supposed to be having any contact in practice. Yet there are head impacts. You might have head impacts before practices are even supposed to start. This is not something the lay person might expect. We can bring that to coaches and say: A certain percent happened before practice; players may be engaging with each other already and when there are no planned drills going on.”
Through its partnership with Catapult and its XOS system, Riddell can allow coaches to synch video and athlete performance metrics with on-field head impact data transmitted and analyzed through InSite. More than 1,200 football programs use helmets equipped for InSite at all levels of play, covering close to 35,000 players, mostly at the high school level, with many at small colleges.
Catapult’s technology is used by more than 3,000 sports teams internationally in nearly 40 sports.
This integrated technology will be available for teams to use in the 2020 season, if there is one.
Catapult uses a device with a GPS antenna to measure the pace the player is performing at and the movements of the body. It is applicable for anything from the impacts in football to a player controlling the ball in soccer, or the deceleration/acceleration of a skater in hockey.