Equipment

The shoulder pads are one of the most important pieces of equipment that the players wear. Shoulder pads consist of a hard plastic shell with foam padding underneath. The pads fit over the shoulders and the chest and rib area, and are secured with various snaps and buckles. Shoulder pads are what give football players their "broad-shouldered" look.

Proper football helmet fitting is a very important step in reducing risk of injuries such as concussions, facial lacerations, and facial fractures. Following generally well accepted guidelines for helmet fitting will mean that your head does not move around within the helmet, and this will mean fewer chances to get a cut on the skin from excessive movement, it will protect better against facial injuries, and it will reduce the chance of a concussion.

There are two styles of football cleats long-cleat football shoes are associated with a greater incidence and severity of knee and ankle injuries when compared to short cleats. The higher incidence of injuries is thought to be due to the fact that long cleats make the foot temporarily stationary in the turf, and therefore unyielding to any internally or externally applied forces, because the foot is planted, it isn't hard to see why there are more injuries with the long-cleat football shoes.

Second, there are two different types of cleats: molded and detachable cleats. Most are designed exclusively for either grass or turf fields.

The service a football chin strap provides is huge in the game. By keeping your jaw in place when you get hit, this small piece of equipment protects your mouth, teeth, jaw, and skull from injury. It can prevent concussions, one of the largest issues affecting football players today.

The football girdle provides improved safety, particularly for running backs and players who receive excessive contact. The girdle’s main benefit is that it keeps all padding in place, ensuring optimum protection. Without a girdle, thigh pads, hip pads and tailbone pads may shift, exposing the body to injury. New girdle designs enhance protection even further, adding extra padding at key contact points.

Knee pads can play a huge role in preventing sports injuries. Using knee pads help athletes decrease in the risk of suffering a knee injury. Knee pads prevent breaks when the kneecap makes contact with a hard floor or wall, whether it be in sports or on a job site. Compression and padding provide shock absorption and prevent damage to the kneecap.

They can be molded to personal, form-fitting specifications both at home or by dentists. The mouthguards of today and the future possess sport-specific features and are expanding into new sports and activities. An increased understanding of the benefits of mouthguards is leading the advances in high-tech mouthguards. In the past they were seen as basically guards to protect your teeth. An athlete is 60 times more likely to damage their teeth if they are not wearing a mouthguard, there is so much more that such a small piece of equipment does. Mouthguards also protect against dangerous lacerations in the mouth. They assist in preventing jaw fracture and can protect the TM joint (jaw joint) from dislocation.

The gloves for different positions are manufactured different so in order to say what the best football gloves are can be extremely tough. You may be able to pick out the best brand of gloves, however, not type. Nike, Reebok, Under Armour, and many more make quality gloves and they also make a large number of types as well. You basically have to locate those who are best for you. For instance, a lineman could have gloves without fingers but extra pads on the surface of the glove, to prevent a hand injury as they’re going head to head against other linemen. The running back and wide receiver’s glove might be a bit sticky in the palm area, and that is basically to have a better grip.

Football pants include pads that snap into place or fit into pockets within the pants. Other pants are shells that you pull over your pads. Regardless of which style you choose, you should have pads for your hips, thighs, knees, and tailbone.

The reason a football bounces so strangely is because of its shape. Afootball is a prolate spheroid, and it's shaped that way because that's also the shape of an inflated pig's bladder, which is what the first footballs were made of. The laces on footballs originally served only one rather humble purpose: keeping a leather cover tightly closed over the inflated pig's bladder that gave the ball its shape. Pig bladders were replaced by rubber bladders in the late 1800s. The laces might eventually have been replaced by a more modern closure were it not for a significant change in the way football was played. The change, influenced in part by President Theodore Roosevelt, gave football laces the new role of helping players grip and guide the ball while passing.

Seattle SeaHawks Defensive Back Richard Sherman interception against San Francisco 49ers.

The primary function of visors is protective in nature. Some players wear visors temporarily to prevent damage from occurring to an existing injury, and then remove the visor once the injury has healed. But other players choose to wear visors permanently to prevent an injury from occurring this can happen if fingers or a foot strike the eyes in the helmet's opening.