What are NFL Players Wearing on Their Necks?

Every week during football season, hundreds of different NFL players take the field and run full speed at each other. As you can imagine, this is a particularly dangerous and violent act to perform over and over and over again.

In order to mitigate some of the danger from potential head trauma, some players (like Tony Pollard and Dalton Schultz, among others) wear a specific piece of equipment around their neck.

Football fans often see them on TV and wonder what they are.

What are NFL Players Wearing on Their Necks?

The NFL neck bands that you may have seen football players wearing is called a Q Collar. It’s a head safety device that’s produced by a company called Q30 and approved by the US Food & Drug Administration.

What Is a Q Collar?

Here’s the simple version: a Q Collar is a high-tech band that gently compresses a player’s jugular vein in order to force more brain into a player’s headspace. The increased blood in the skull provides a cushion to prevent brain movement, or “sloshing,” that’s often the result of sports contact.

By Q30’s own admission, the Q Collar isn’t intended to prevent traditional concussive hits. Instead, it’s seeking to minimize the impact of the much more common subconcussive forces that are extremely common in sports like soccer and football. Professional athletes might experience thousands of these hits over the course of their careers. 

Scientists and football fans alike are concerned about head injuries and concussions. That’s especially true in seasons like this one, where high-profile players like Tua Tagovailoa had to be replaced by Skylar Thompson after multiple concussions.