Florida Football: Gators debut new Riddell Axiom helmet

Florida Gators football debuts new Riddell Axiom helmet

The Florida Gators football team has followed suit with other NCAA teams in debuting a new type of helmet to the college football landscape.  The Riddell “Axiom” is a newly designed helmet, in which Riddell can take 3D imaging of players’ heads, and make the helmets match their head dimensions exactly.  This also includes the padding which is a custom fit as well, allowing the helmet to not slide around on a players’ head.

As stated in the tweet below, the helmet also reports the data from impacts to the coaching staff and sideline, which is extremely important in preventing concussions.  Now why is this important to the Florida Gators, and why is it pertinent to football as a whole?  The main reason I wanted to cover this is that while it looks impressive, the protection could be something we have not seen in football to date.  Protecting players at all costs needs to be a priority after we have seen careers cut short by concussions, such as Luke Kuechly.  At the collegiate level, this is even more important, especially in the SEC and power five as players are only getting faster, stronger, and are hitting harder.

This helmet was debuted for the Gators at a team practice this week, being worn by QB Anthony Richardson.  There have been several other fittings so far this offseason, including:

• QB – CJ Stroud – Ohio State University
• QB – Dillon Gabriel – Oklahoma
• LB – Lance Dixon – West Virginia
• RB – Zay Bowser – UCF
• OL – Hayden Conner – Texas

As of right now, information is somewhat scarce as to how much this helmet is proactively protecting the players as it has not been utilized in games yet.  However, we can most definitely hope it will do what it is designed to do this season and starts being implemented throughout the sport to protect the next generation of NFL stars.

https://twitter.com/KeiserDonavon/status/1507104005352300552?s=20&t=vEkASy-Lquo2dnuD8A9hqg