The National Football League is asking inventors, engineers and researchers to help make football helmets safer, starting with the facemask.

At a Super Bowl innovation event last week, the league announced a new HealthTECH Challenge focused on redesigning helmet facemasks to better protect players from head injuries. 

The competition is open to startups, universities, engineers and companies with ideas for improving how facemasks handle impact on the field.

“We’re trying to get this out through all the channels we typically do to try to engage, not necessarily the helmet industry alone, but engineers, engineering schools, people involved in material science and others,” Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president for player health and safety, said.

“They might have different ideas around architecture, might have different idea around materials. Participate in this, make your ideas win a prize. I hope, like we’ve done in the past, that this is going to advance the thinking," Miller added.

Helmet safety has improved in recent years, largely due to changes in padding and shell design. The NFL has also worked with manufacturers to create position-specific helmets. 

For example, quarterbacks now wear helmets with extra padding in the back after data showed many concussions happened when their heads hit the ground.

But facemasks? Those haven’t changed much.

NFL data shows that 44% of in-game concussions during the most recent season involved hits to the facemask, up from 29% in 2015. 

As helmets have improved, fewer concussions come from hits to the shell, and more now come from contact to the facemask.

“What we haven’t seen over that period of time are any changes of any note to the facemask,” Miller said. "As a football fan, if you look back five or seven years ago, it looks exactly the same as it was before. It’s made up of the same materials."

Arik Armstead, an 11-year NFL veteran defensive lineman, said he welcomed the league's push for new ideas. He recently switched to a helmet rated as safer through testing.

“This is awesome,” Armstead added. “I think a lot is happening in our approach to improving these things. A challenge like this is amazing because you’re bringing solicited, new creative minds into the process.

Winners of the challenge could receive up to $100,000 total in funding, along with technical support to help turn their designs into real equipment. 

The NFL plans to select a winner in August, and Miller said helmet makers could begin using successful designs soon after.