NFL Injury Report: Austin Collie Was Wearing New TPU Material in His Helmet

The NFL has been trying to find ways of protecting its players from concussions and head trauma for the past few seasons, and when they think they have found a solution, it only proves to be wrong.

Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Austin Collie was laid out in a helmet-to-helmet hit that left his body motionless for several minutes.

Once he was loaded onto the cart and taken off the field, any viewer could see that Collie was indeed wearing his helmet that had the newer material inside to help prevent a more severe head injury.

These helmets have a material inside and replaces the traditional white foam that has been a mainstay in football helmets for many years.

This material is supposed to absorb more impact and help possibly prevent the wearer from getting a severe or worse traumatic head injury.

Called Thermoplastic Urethane (TPU), this is used by Schutt in their helmets, and is supposed to dramatically reduce the amount of an impact over the standard foam padding.

Obviously, that is an improvement over the standard foam padding in helmets, but the NFL really needs to help companies like Schutt to develop better innovations preventing these terrible head injuries from occurring.

Schutt also says that TPU does not wear down like foam padding and lasts much longer.

Collie will probably be the first to tell you that the cushioning that TPU brought to his own helmet saved him from an even more serious injury than what he experienced.

It has been reported that he has feeling in all of his extremities.

He may have been lucky that he was one of a reported 200-plus NFL players who use the TPU inside their helmets and that number is on the rise from only a few dozen who wore the material one season ago.

The NFL is an impact sport, but there should be consideration to require all players to install the TPU material in all helmets, because one can only guess would would have really happened to Collie had he not used TPU in his own helmet.

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