Madden's Concussion-Free Fantasy World Will Look Even Stranger This NFL Season

Content warning: This article mentions self-harm.

Longtime players of EA Sports games may recall how the publisher's famous slogan, "It's in the game," is actually a shortened version of the full sentiment one would hear upon booting up any of its many sports games across several decades: "If it's in the game, it's in the game." This simple phrase worked well for a long time as a way to tout authenticity. If you're seeing it on the field (or rink, court, et al), you can bet it'll be in the video game simulation. That was the promise anyway.

But it worked. The soundbyte is iconic; I can still hear it in my head even as EA dropped the first half of that slogan years ago, and today, the Madden team's North Star is, arguably more than ever, authenticity. It's a word that comes up constantly whenever I speak to members of the EA Orlando (formerly Tiburon) team. But this year's NFL season is set to introduce a stark contrast between what's in the game and what's in the game: Guardian Caps.

Invented in 2010, Guardian Caps represent the latest in player-safety equipment. These bulky, quilt-like coverings go over a player's traditional helmet and are meant to protect players' brains more than even the best helmets can on their own. Since 2022, players have been wearing Guardian Caps in practice sessions. They became a practice mandate last season and have been spotted in preseason games this summer. When the 2024 season kicks off in a few days, it'll mark the first time the admittedly aesthetically awkward protective layers are approved for use in regular season games.

Players can opt to use a Guardian Cap as individuals. This means some teams may have no players using them in games, while others may have several running around the gridiron in Guardian Caps this fall. For now, it's a personal choice, though we'll see what the future holds for a sport beleaguered by head trauma and the resulting legal problems such an epidemic has created.

Guardian Caps might be a powerful tool to reduce the frequency of concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, better known as CTE. This degenerative disease can occur when a person suffers multiple concussions in their lifetime, and can lead to tragic consequences including memory and cognition loss, mood disorders, and even suicide. When former NFL player Dave Duerson died by suicide in 2011, he did so by shooting himself in the chest, and he left a note imploring that his brain be studied for signs of trauma he believed he was suffering from as a result of playing football. A year later, linebacker Junior Seau died in the same manner, and though no note was left behind, some believe Seau's unspoken message was the same as Duerson's note. Both men were posthumously found to have definitive signs of CTE.

For the NFL, CTE is a major image problem, as well as a legal concern, as depicted in the movie Concussion, based on true events regarding a forensic pathologist countering the league's attempts to bury his findings on CTE. Today the league is still trying to separate itself from its ugly history, which has had the positive effect of driving more numerous and robust player-safety initiatives, whether that's to seriously improve player safety or just cover its ass in court--realistically, it's both. For a long time, coaches and even afflicted players often preferred to sweep concussions under the rug. This was an open secret in the NFL, and many football players of any level--even in high school--would likely tell you what they have told me: Whatever their number of reported concussions is, the truth is something higher.

When Guardian Caps debuted in 2022, the league said that they can reduce the force from head contact by 10% if one player is wearing it, and 20% if all players involved are wearing them. Like masking in a pandemic, they work best when everyone wears one, so I expect them to become more popular and perhaps even mandated eventually. But you'll not see it depicted in Madden, EA's best-selling football game, because in that case, the league's answer has long been to ignore concussions altogether.

It's hard to confirm when exactly Madden stopped depicting concussions. Without the much older games in my library anymore, and without EA or the league willfully commenting on this topic, I'm at the mercy of a murky online discussion that offers several half-truths and urban legends. For example, some say Madden stopped showing concussions after 2001, but really, this was just the ambulance that would sometimes arrive to take injured players off the field. The league requested this feature be taken out because it felt the game was making light of major injuries, though concussions weren't taken out at that time.

There's also some gray area regarding when the language of "concussion" was switched to "head injury." According to a now-deleted Sports Illustrated feature, EA says this was done for authenticity reasons, given that players' injuries are not immediately diagnosed right after they're injured the way Madden had been depicting.

It's said that both the league and John Madden himself suggested that the Madden dev team depict concussions less frequently in its video game to better simulate the real-life frequency of the injury. However, due to such awful concussion reporting in the league at that time, the figures EA was told to align with are likely to have been extremely faulty. It may even be that the game's rate of concussions before those changes better reflected the obfuscated reality of the league's problem.

It was in Madden 2005 when players could deliver such earth-shattering hits that their opponents' helmets might fly off, but a year later, this was already gone. Again, EA said this was a technical limitation owed to moving the series to the new consoles for Madden 2006. It's worth noting that the launch-tackles that resulted in this animation of yesteryear are today punishable in the NFL by penalties, fines, and even suspensions for repeat offenders in what was another player-safety decision. Therefore, these moments were likely to have disappeared by now even if the game didn't do away with them so long ago.

Today, there are no concussions in Madden, and no "head injuries" either. To my memory, it's been years since they've been depicted--even animations of players clutching their helmets and feeling woozy after a play seem to have been wiped from the series. It's a popular--though unsubstantiated--fan theory that EA merely tweaked the language of injury reports that formerly mentioned head trauma to instead read as "bruised sternums," a class of injury that is now much more prevalent in Madden than real life.

But now, the emergence of in-game Guardian Caps re-opens the discussion around Madden and head injuries. Some players, even prominent ones like the Colts' Jonathan Taylor, say they plan to wear a Guardian Cap in games this fall. Just like Odell Beckham Jr's single half-sleeve or Derrick Henry's eye-black meant to look like a cross, these Guardian Caps will become synonymous with the players wearing them. Normally, this would be something EA would seek to depict in the game--"It's in the game," after all--but given Madden exists in a fantasy world free of head trauma, the absence of Guardian Caps will soon be obvious.

There are 17 different helmets in Madden 25, including the single-bar helmet of the 1960s, which I assume is there for comedic effect. There are roughly a half-dozen different mouthguards, about the same number of visors, and many more facemasks. You can customize any player's gear in a significant number of ways, head to toe, but you can't give them a Guardian Cap, even if you'll see them wearing one this fall, because that would admit concussions exist, which modern Madden isn't willing--or, more likely, allowed--to do.

But as we move toward an all-Guardian Cap future in the NFL, the league and EA will have to find a new way of addressing the problem. Pretending it doesn't exist has long been a band-aid for a much more significant issue, and even if the NFL would've been content to promote that concussion-free alternate universe forever, the increasing adoption rate of Guardian Caps among NFL players forces it to acknowledge the problem directly. Guardian Caps are in the game, so when exactly will they be in the game?

GameSpot reached out to EA for comment on this subject and the potential of Madden adding Guardian Caps in Madden NFL 25, though we haven't heard back yet. We'll update this story should EA respond.

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