Antonio Brown may have lost his fight against the NFL over his right to wear his old helmet, but he’s not giving up hope just yet.
After an arbiter denied Brown’s grievance against the league over the helmet matter, the Raiders receiver has resorted to bartering with randos on Twitter to get a helmet that would be approved by the league. On Tuesday morning, Brown essentially posted a Craigslist ad on Twitter in hopes that some fan out there has a Schutt Air Advantage helmet that was manufactured within the last ten years, which is all the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment requires.
So far, there haven’t been any takers. Some have wondered why Brown doesn’t just go to Schutt directly, but the sports equipment company stopped making the Air Advantage helmet three years ago because the technology behind the design was outdated.
Via ksat.com:
We discontinued making the helmet three years ago because current helmet technology had moved past it. The AiR Advantage was the last varsity helmet made by Schutt that featured traditional foam padding. That material, which is used by most other helmet manufacturers, does not perform as well as the TPU Cushioning we now use in all of our varsity helmets.
TPU (thermoplastic urethane) Cushioning absorbs significantly more impact across a wider variety of temperatures than any other helmet on the field. Third party testing by an independent, certified helmet testing facility has proven that, three years in a row. The AiR Advantage had lived out its useful life as a product and was discontinued when something better was developed.
It sounds like AB is out of luck, unless some fan comes through with the goods. But even if Brown is able to procure a helmet manufactured after 2010, it will only be a stopgap solution to his helmet problem and he’ll be right back where he is now whenever we hit 10 years past the manufacture date of his newly acquired helmet.
It’s probably in Brown’s best interest to just drop the helmet thing now so he can get used to a new, safer one sooner rather than later. Now, about those feet…
