PENFIELD, N.Y. — Most of us saw it happen during Thursday night’s Buffalo Bills game.

Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa suffered another concussion — his third in his NFL career.

The following night, Friday, was a big night for the Penfield Patriots as the school held their homecoming game. How are teams like Penfield protecting their players during games?

“Guardian Caps is one of the main ways — it’s a safe stay. It’s essentially thinking about it as it’s a bubble that goes on the helmet itself,” said Cody Foster, a former college football player and high school football coach.

Foster says Penfield has started implementing “Guardian Caps” during practices to minimize head injuries.

“And so while they’re practicing, it adds an extra set of pushing for that head-to-head contact, because in the game of football, you’re never going to eliminate that contact. But it really helps the players come to understand, hey, your head is a precious thing, we want to protect it at all costs,” Foster said.

Foster says teaching players how to safely tackle also helps prevent head injuries.

“It’s called the rugby-style tackle, where you’re learning to hit with your shoulder wrap and then roll on to the ground versus making that first contact with your head,” Foster said. “I’ve seen it at the youth level, middle school, JV, varsity, in the college level — coaches really making an emphasis to take the head out of the tackle.”

And minimizing repeated brain damage is vital to making sure players can keep playing football for a long time.

URMC physiatrist Heather Ma says it’s important to make sure if a player does get a concussion, they have time to recover.

“The more concussions you have, the worse your prognosis is. Obviously, the longer it will take you to recover and the higher the risk of having longer term neurologic deficits,” Ma said.

She added: “What we call second impact syndrome typically would be the worst-case scenario. If you have a concussion, you don’t fully recover, you have another concussion. But then if you /////// usually within a few days, it can cause death. If you have two closely direct injuries hit. So that’s why the initial recommendation and that’s why somebody like him was taken off the field and not allowed to go back to play.”

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