Vikings’ Ryan Kelly thought about retiring after multiple concussions, but says, ‘I still love this game’

Vikings center Ryan Kelly sat in a hotel room at Hanbury Manor in Ware, England, about 4,000 miles away from home. He asked himself: “Why did this happen again? Is this the last one? Is it going to keep getting worse? Am I going to be doing too much damage to my head?”

Kelly had just suffered his second concussion in three weeks against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Dublin, the first leg of the Vikings’ two-game international road trip ending against the Browns in London. It was the second time in the last three years that Kelly has been concussed twice in the same season.

That fact, and symptoms from the concussion, left Kelly in a vulnerable place as many questions flooded his healing brain. His first reassurance came from coach Kevin O’Connell inside a makeshift meeting room at the 200-acre English country club.

“You have a conversation where you’re emotional, a little bit erratic, kind of spiraling mentally in a big situation and big moment in your career,” Kelly told the Minnesota Star Tribune, “and to kind of have him be the calming voice and reassure you that you’re going to be fine, we want you to do whatever you need and take as much time as you need, it’s the best feeling as a player.”

“It’s a conversation I’d hoped we would have,” Kelly added. “You never know with a new coaching staff how everybody takes concussions.”

Back in Minnesota, the 30-minute drive between Kelly’s home and the Vikings training facility became his time to think about his four-time Pro Bowl career and what he wants the rest of his life to look like with his wife, Emma; their twin boys, Ford and Duke; and their daughter, Stella.

Kelly, 32, considered retirement. He’s had at least five concussions in his 10-year career, but he said he met with doctors who eased his concerns about his long-term brain health.

When Kelly returns Sunday against the Packers at Lambeau Field, he’ll be wearing a different helmet: a higher-rated Riddell Axiom 3D made for linemen. He’ll also be the first Vikings player to wear a Guardian Cap, a padded helmet cover, in a regular season game this year.

“If all systems are go,” O’Connell said, “then let’s attack this thing together with no kind of worry and let him go play football, which is what he wants to do.”

Kelly’s first concussion this season, on Sept. 14 against the Falcons, prompted him to change helmets for the first time since 2018. Vikings equipment manager Mike Parson helped Kelly pick Riddell’s Axiom 3D, which comes in three varieties, including a standard model that has earned the highest safety rating in the NFL and NFLPA’s annual lab testing in back-to-back years.

“By a pretty wide margin actually,” said Thad Ide, Riddell’s chief product officer.

Ide credits the customization of each helmet, which features a 3D-printed liner with tailored polymer lattice structures that provide padding where needed. The customization starts with Adam Groene, the Vikings’ assistant equipment manager, scanning a player’s head and uploading the images to a Riddell app.

Kelly’s order was submitted after the Sept. 14 game. While customization is faster than it used to be, his new helmet did not arrive before the team’s trip to Dublin, where he suffered a second concussion in his old helmet during the Sept. 28 loss to Pittsburgh.

Kelly is wearing a helmet made for offensive and defensive linemen that comes with additional padding in the front to account for the repetitive hits at the line of scrimmage. There’s also a model with more padding in the back of the helmet for quarterbacks concerned about falling backward.

Position-specific helmets were introduced by Vicis, a Seattle-based company that started in 2015 with a $1.1 million grant through the NFL’s Head Health Challenge. The initiative began in 2013, when the league first agreed to a settlement with more than 4,500 former players over concussion-related brain injuries.

Vicis, now a sister brand with helmet manufacturer Schutt, also pioneered soft-shell helmets that deform and absorb some contact.

Concussion numbers in the NFL have dropped over the last decade of awareness about the dangers of repeated blows to the head, on-field rule changes and off-field research and helmet development. In 2024, the NFL recorded the fewest concussions — 182 — in games and practices since it began tracking the data in 2015.

Lab results produce a series of charts ranking available helmets in color zones: green for preferred, yellow for not recommended and red for prohibited. Those charts are explained to players every spring in a presentation before they pick a helmet for the year.

A recent influx of new helmet technology and varieties led to a churn, said Jeff Miller, the NFL’s top health and safety executive. At least six helmet types have been outlawed each of the last three years, driven out of commission by newer helmets with superior safety ratings.

The NFL’s data shows that players switching to higher-ranked helmets have lower injury rates “oftentimes substantially,” Miller added. “We share that with players individually as they get educated about new helmets that come onto the market, so they can trust the rankings on the poster.”

Jason Neubauer, the chief innovation officer at Certor Sports (the parent company to Vicis and Schutt), learned a lesson a decade ago when Vicis would host Seahawks players to try on one of the company’s new helmets.

“They’d say, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’” Neubauer said. “Mirror test is everything.”

Parson instead has all safety-rating posters — for general helmets and those specific to linemen and quarterbacks — along a wall inside TCO Performance Center. Parson was fitting Darrisaw, who suffered back-to-back concussions in 2022, with the new helmet when teammates walked by and gave him bad reviews. Darrisaw said he was told he “looked like a Power Ranger” with the bulbous front that has extra padding.

“I told him, ‘Don’t even listen,’” Parson said.

Darrisaw will start his 31st game in the helmet on Sunday without yet sustaining another brain injury.

“Knock on wood,” he said.

Edge rusher Jonathan Greenard “look like he got a Transformer helmet” in the Zero2 Trench Elite, said teammate Isaiah Rodgers. But Greenard said the look — in addition to the top safety rating for defensive linemen — were draws.

Receiver Jordan Addison switched to Schutt’s new F7 Pro this year because it was lighter than his first NFL helmet, Riddell’s SpeedFlex Precision. Addison said his neck used to hurt.

He also thought receiver Justin Jefferson looked good in the sleek F7 Pro.

Addison needed a mirror to make sure he did, too.

“I go take it to the bathroom,” Addison said. “Make sure I’m right.”

Schutt produced the F7 Pro to have better safety capacity, but with the same outer shell as the F7 because of how many players like Jefferson and the Bengals’ Ja’Marr Chase grew fond of the look. Because of the familiarity and higher safety rating, the F7 Pro was among the NFL’s fastest-adopted new offerings this year, Neubauer said.

When cornerback Jeff Okudah suffered a concussion Sept. 8 in Chicago, he changed helmets and initiated a defensive back migration to the F7 Pro. Cornerback Byron Murphy Jr. and safety Josh Metellus followed suit. (Okudah entered the concussion protocol a second time after the Oct. 23 game against the Chargers.)

Metellus said he had been wearing a heavier F7 that was in the NFL’s yellow range of “not recommended” helmets.

“That’s what a lot of this is,” Parson said. “It’s kind of word of mouth. Peer to peer.”

Comfort is another prevailing factor for players, which is why Kelly continued to wear the Riddell SpeedFlex Precision that ranked eighth out of 11 recommended (or green-rated) helmets this season.

“I wore that helmet since 2018,” said Kelly, “so in that seven years I had two concussions [in 2023]. I guess I’d never really thought about making the change. It was still in the green.”

His history with brain injuries prompted Kelly to visit Dr. Michael Collins, a clinical neuropsychologist and executive director of the University of Pittsburgh’s Sports Medicine Concussion Program, which has treated a number of professional athletes.

The Vikings training staff also set up twice-a-week physical therapy appointments at Twin Cities Orthopedics on the team’s campus, where over the past seven weeks Kelly had one-to-two-hour sessions.

“He had a list of things for me to work on,” Kelly said of his physical therapist. “Our training staff and him talked frequently, so they knew if I forgot all the different homework assignments: if I had to do this, focus on this, or time something, see how it all goes. So, it was a little bit more in depth than your standard concussion protocol.”

Kelly said he’s symptom-free and “in a much better spot than I was two months ago,” when he wondered whether he’d play again.

New questions have come to mind since then.