Now that the gridiron game has proven to be rougher on its players’ brains than anyone realized, designers are taking another look at the football helmet and wondering if that’s the problem. An aerospace designer named Michael Princip thinks he might have a solution: a “multi-component anti-shock helmet design” that absorbs the energy of collisions and sends that energy away from the head.

From Wired Playbook:

Princip has spent the last six months redesigning the football helmet so it can better dissipate energy from collisions. The result is the Bulwark, a design that still features internal padding, much like current helmets covered by a solid shell. But the true innovation lies on top of that shell: a shock-absorbing layer of pre-molded foam. “It’s like an industrial-grade bubble wrap,” according to Princip. That padding layer would then be covered by four separate sections that comprise the outer shell.

The openings between those sections would act like crumple zones, giving flex to the outer portion of the helmet while absorbing a hit, thereby lessening trauma to the head. The design would also lighten the helmet’s weight by using new materials to reduce the force of impact in helmet-to-helmet collisions.

Not that the force if hitting your head against anything can prevent an injury. Eli Manning reminded us of that last Monday. Still, letting the helmet absorb shocks rather than the brain seems like a vast improvement for players who aren’t so eager to follow the NFL’s current policy on brain bruises. The question now is whether this design (or something like it) gets adopted by the NFL or NCAA in the near future.

(H/T: Playbook.)