Mar thirteen, 2022

  • David NewtonESPN Staff Writer

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    • Covered Panthers, NFL for 11 years
    • More than than 25 years experience roofing NFL, college football and NASCAR
    • Joined ESPN in 2006

INDIANAPOLIS – Luke Kuechly spent the 2021 football game flavour hunting, line-fishing and traveling to beautiful wilderness spots he'd dreamed about, experiencing things he never had time for during his eight years as a Pro Basin linebacker for the Carolina Panthers and 1 twelvemonth as a scout for the squad.

He got the same glow when he talked about shooting an elk with his dad as when he talked about the pick-six that finished off a win over the Arizona Cardinals in the 2015 NFC Title Game.

At 30, Kuechly looks as though he could nonetheless be one of the NFL's aristocracy defenders, although he insists the twenty pounds he shed since retiring in January 2020 would make that tough.

"I'd become beat up,'' Kuechly said with a express joy.

Simply Kuechly misses football game, and after a six-month hiatus connecting with nature and himself, he's looking for ways to again be associated with the game.

That's why he resurfaced last week at the NFL combine, two years after his retirement. Kuechly was there to promote the Q-Neckband he wore in his final three seasons after suffering his third concussion in three years in 2016 during a prime-fourth dimension telecast against the New Orleans Saints.

The thin neckband wraps around the cervix and applies pressure on the jugular vein to increment blood book in the skull. That creates an airbag upshot effectually the brain that inventor Dr. David Smith and some other scientists believe reduces the chance for concussion, particularly harm from repetitive hits.

"I beloved the game of football,'' Kuechly said. "If I had the opportunity to play it forever, I would have.''

While Kuechly won't flat-out say concussions ended his career at 28, there is no denying they were a factor. There's also no denying the Q-Neckband he wore on an experimental basis will get more than attending now that information technology has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

Kuechly believes the blessing will convince more than NFL players to article of clothing the Q-Collar. The only ones who have worn information technology in games are Kuechly, Buffalo Bills linebacker A.J. Klein and former Pro Basin tight end Vernon Davis.

At that place wasn't much Kuechly or others could say about the collar in 2017 to convince other players to join him because it withal was in the experimental stage. "Hush, hush," equally Kuechly likes to say when he's not allowed to talk about something.

But at present the hereafter Hall of Famer wants to tell everyone about the device he believes helped extend his career.

"It's 1 of those things, I trust that it works,'' Kuechly said. "There'south a lot of other examples of it working. Did it help extend? I would hope and then. Did information technology hurt? Absolutely not.''

'Luuuu-ke' stamp of approval

Smith said he felt like a begetter watching his baby walk for the first time when Kuechly became the beginning NFL player to wear the Q-Collar in 2017. He'd seen positive results from Kuechly's loftier school squad, St. Xavier in Cincinnati, which had used the collar for 4 years.

He'd seen positive results from athletes on other high school and college teams.

But to meet the collar in the NFL was a monumental pace.

"The brownie Luke brings to bear, just his visibility and merely the likable nature he is,'' Smith said. "He's just a football histrion's player. That part has been a wonderful boon to having people immediately understand this but isn't a toy.

"This is a real medical device; it's really truly being used by the best of the all-time, and they're getting huge benefits from it.''

The NFL hasn't officially approved the collar. A league spokesperson said only that information technology will be reviewed as "any engineering that could take a positive issue on histrion rubber.''

Suzanne Williams, the vice president of sports marketing for Q30 Innovations, which produces the Q-Collar, said it's acceptable in the NFL because it's being promoted every bit a medical device, not as equipment.

The FDA approval in February 2021 said much of what Kuechly couldn't until now.

"Information technology's critical,'' Smith said. "We had a lot of back and along with some of the best scientists in the world, helping the FDA understand all these microstructural changes we were seeing in the brain are drastically and dramatically diminished.

"Not just a little fraction. It'due south dramatic. It took a while for the FDA to come effectually. The medical world has believed for decades that those microstructural changes are damage. The FDA finally came out and said they are damage.''

Kuechly said he felt safer with the neckband to the point where he seldom took it off as a actor. He considered it a competitive edge that allowed him to play at a high level, comparable to moving-picture show written report or workouts.

He looked at the collar no differently than he did a mouthpiece or shoulder pads.

"Everybody is always looking for the edge, how can I be as healthy as possible?'' said Kuechly, who is unsure what his office in football game will exist past promoting the neckband. "That was a big reason for me [wearing] information technology.''

'Feather in the cap'

Kuechly began looking for that edge when he missed the final half-dozen games of the 2016 season after beingness carted off in tears following an awkward hit of Saints running back Tim Hightower. He heard from the St. Xavier High squad trainer through his female parent that results with the collar were skilful, so he tried it.

"Dorsum and then, he was like, 'I don't know if it works, but I've got nothing to lose,' '' Q30 Innovations' Williams said.

Today, the scientific discipline backs upward what Smith and others were promoting -- that the collar helps protect the brain.

The FDA approval assessed the safety and effectiveness of the Q-Collar through several studies, including i with 284 loftier school football players thirteen years or older. In the report, scans found no significant changes in deeper tissues of the brain in 77% of the players who wore the neckband, compared with 27% who didn't vesture it.

Smith, whose son was the commencement to wear the neckband in competition, was elated with the study results.

"I have a hard time thinking everyone that really looked at the studies and seeing what it does wouldn't feel the same mode,'' he said. "This is actual science.''

There were skeptics in the science field when Kuechly first began wearing the collar, simply that didn't preclude the FDA from approval it. One expert in the earth of concussion study who asked non to exist identified in a 2017 ESPN.com article on the neckband said "playing with claret vessels is actually risky and could have negative consequences.''

Eric Nauman, a professor of biomedical engineering and basic medical scientific discipline at Purdue University, is function of the schoolhouse's Neurotrauma Group that has conducted studies on 550 football and soccer players. He, too, was skeptical in 2017.

"We actually did not pursue this ane because nosotros had concerns about the idea of pressing on the [jugular] vein, especially in an uncontrolled manner,'' he said.

The science that had Smith initially await at pressure on the jugular vein came from studying animals, specially the woodpecker, earning him the nickname "the Bird Brain Md.''

He spent nine months researching the woodpecker and other G-force-sustaining animals trying to figure out why, later repetitive blows to the head area, the bird could "fly abroad without a headache.''

Smith adamant that nature created internal devices to modulate and change the pressure and volume inside the cranial space to prevent concussive symptoms. He modeled the collar afterward that.

Kuechly was only looking for a device that would allow him to continue playing the game in which he accumulated 1,092 tackles from 2012 to 2019, more than than any player in the NFL during that span.

To have Kuechly back at present promoting the neckband, Smith said, "is a feather in the cap.''

"Nobody wants to vesture more equipment, right?'' Smith said. "Nobody wants to put another thing on. But this is protecting their most valid and most treasured part of your body, being your brain.

"And Luke knew that early. To come back and say he wanted to give back and represent the collar, that'due south but aces.''