More Long Island high school football players are wearing Guardian Caps. The benefits are up for debate.

Division High School football player Aiden Mirelis suffered a concussion last season and was forced to sit out his final game as a junior.

The injury shook Mirelis, a 6-4, 190-pound wide receiver/defensive back who also plays basketball and runs track.

Before this season, and with the potential to play Division I college football, Mirelis bought himself a Guardian Cap, the soft-shell piece of padded protective headgear that fits over the traditional football helmet and weighs about 8 ounces.

“It was a $60 investment toward my future,” Mirelis said. “I know it looks like a mushroom cloud on my head, but I don’t care. Some teammates have fun teasing about it, but I believe it keeps me safe.”

That feeling of safety has led to an increase in Long Island high school football players choosing to wear Guardian Caps not only in practice, but also in games. The use of the protective headgear comes while participation in high school football on Long Island has declined 30% the past 10 years, and experts attribute the drop in large part  to the fear of head injuries and the long-term effects of concussions.

“It’s a good thing to try to make the game safer, a positive step,” Bayport-Blue Point coach Mike Zafonte said. “Parents are afraid of concussions, and the participation numbers are going down.”

Guardian Caps are “engineered for impact reduction,” according to the Georgia-based company that makes them, but experts disagree on how effective they are at reducing head injuries and the risk of suffering a concussion.

Dr. James Paci, the director of orthopedics and sports medicine for Orlin & Cohen Orthopedic Group and a former quarterback at Huntington, said not enough is known. “At this point, there’s no robust empirical data proving a decrease in concussion incidents or severity,” Paci said.

Still, players interviewed by Newsday said they feel safer wearing the extra padding.

“I feel really protected with this on,” said BBP running back Josh Franchak. “At the beginning, I hadn't planned on wearing it in games, only in practice. [But] because I run the ball so much it's a good idea.”

Guardian Caps on the rise

Newsday surveyed the 106 public, private and Catholic high schools with a football program on Long Island this season and found that 48 schools (45%) said they use the equipment either in practice or in games. 

The same Newsday survey two years ago showed 31 of the then-112 football programs (28%) had used the Guardian Caps for some or all of its players. Several schools that had Guardian Caps in 2024 don't have them now, in some cases because players who used them graduated, coaches say. The caps were approved for use by the  state Public High School Athletic Association as optional equipment for the 2024 season.

At the time, there were no varsity football players on Long Island wearing the Guardian Caps in games. Players said they didn’t mind wearing it in practice but didn’t like the way it looked and chose not to wear them in games.

“I don’t care what it looks like,” Mirelis said. “I just care that it protects my head. I leave it on all the time. Practice and games. Why take a risk? I have a few Division I offers, and a big senior year will bring in more opportunities.”

Weighing the cost

Guardian Caps cost between $60 and $90 each, depending on the number purchased. Some schools, such as Sayville and Westhampton, bought them for all of its players. Others, such as Herricks, Longwood, Miller Place and BBP, ran fundraisers to help pay for the equipment. Some players, such as Mirelis, buy their own.

Zafonte requires players to wear the Guardian Caps in practice.

“I make our guys wear them in practice all the time,” he said. “We fundraised over four years to purchase them and make sure we could outfit every player on the varsity and junior varsity.”

Sayville coach Rob Hoss said he asked for the caps for his linemen this season because of the head-to-head collisions on the line. The school’s director of athletics, Ryan Cox, went a step further and bought them for every varsity and junior varsity player. With about 80 players, the cost was close to $5,000, Hoss said.

“He told me when it concerns the health and safety of our student-athletes we should go all in,” Hoss said. “His top priority was the safety of our players and that was paramount to the expense.”

Do the Guardian Caps help?

Division coach Jay Hegi said the increase in the use of Guardian Caps is noticeable and players feel more protected wearing them. 

“You see them all over the place," Hegi said. "To me, it’s a mindset that makes players feel more comfortable. It can’t hurt and I believe it helps.”

Researchers at the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab have been doing independent testing of helmets and safety gear for a variety of sports since 2011.

In 2024, the school’s researchers conducted testing of the two versions of the Guardian Cap — the Guardian Cap XT and the Guardian Cap NXT (which is the NFL version).

A summary of the testing concluded, in part, that “helmet shell add-ons have been shown to decrease linear and rotational acceleration, thereby helping to reduce risk."

Barry Miller, the director of outreach and business development for the Virginia Tech Helmet Lab, said the lab continues to study youth level football and plans to have another study published in the near future.

Asked if there's any evidence that wearing the Guardian Cap is detrimental in any way, Miller said, “We haven't seen that, no . . . We generally say more padding is a good thing."

Miller added that the helmet itself is more important than the cap.

"The top performing football helmets are fantastic as far as impact protection," Miller said, "and they're optimized and designed without anything over the top of them."

Chris Nowinski, a former college football player and the co-founder and CEO of the Concussion and CTE Foundation, said there isn't enough evidence to prove the caps help.

“The laboratory evidence on the benefit for youth and high school students is microscopic,” Nowinski said. “And what those lab tests can't tell you is how many additional hits they will take because they now have a larger helmet. So I do not recommend it for youth and high school.”

Lawrence quarterback Khalil Brassell said he feels a difference when he wears his Guardian Cap.

“I believe it does lessen the impact on helmet-to-helmet hits,” Brassell said. “And that’s important. I don’t know if they reduce head injuries, but if it helps in any way why not wear it?”

Guardian Caps and the NFL

The NFL allows the use of two models of the Guardian Cap called the NXT (which weighs 12.7 ounces and costs about $100) and the just-approved NXT 2.0 (a slightly sleeker design at 12 ounces and about $135). 

The league first allowed players to wear Guardian Caps in practices in 2021 and began requiring linemen to wear them in training camp and practices in 2022. Last season it extended the mandate to nearly all players in full-contact workouts, exempting only those who don’t get hit in practice, such as quarterbacks, kickers and punters, though many wear them anyway. There is no mandate for games.

But at last month’s NFL meeting in New York, Dr. Allen Sills, the league’s chief medical officer, said that based on the five seasons of as-yet-unpublished data they have gathered on the use of Guardian Caps, “there is absolutely a statistically significant reduction in concussion in impacts to the helmet” among players who are wearing them. “Period. End of story.”

The league had been unable to make that claim previously because, Sills said, “the magnitude of the reduction didn't quite reach statistical significance” in prior studies. The latest conclusion has yet to appear in a peer-reviewed journal.

Roughly two dozen players are regularly wearing Guardian Caps in NFL games this season, though the league does not keep an official record. Two years ago, the number was about six.

Most of those players are younger and started wearing them in high school or college, but veterans such as Saints receiver Chris Olave and Patriots receiver Romeo Doubs wear them as well. Many more players — almost two-thirds of the league — wear one of 10 helmet models that the NFL and NFLPA say provide similar or better protection than the caps.

As for youth and high school use, however, the NFL has no official stand on Guardian Caps.

“What we've consistently said publicly is, in our hands, in our players, in our practice environment, it has been a net positive and we've seen benefit,” Sills said. “We've never talked about other levels of play. We've just said this is sort of our experience. But from our standpoint, as I've said before, it's been an unqualified success.”

Newsday's Tom Rock, Ben Dickson and Matt Lindsay contributed to this report