Glory Has Faded for the Neck Roll; Memories Have Not (Published 2011) (2024)

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — It goes by names like cowboy collar and butterfly restrictor, can look like a cut-up life preserver, a miniature washboard or a tube of cookie dough and, depending on whom you ask, is incredibly effective or about as necessary as an appendix.

In its glory days — which football historians say ran from the 1970s to the early ’90s — the neck roll (a catchall term for a few styles of protective devices that sprout from between a player’s shoulder pads) was everywhere. Longtime N.F.L. fans need not see pictures to remember Howie Long’s oversize backward clerical collar, the elephant tusks perched on Wilber Marshall’s shoulders or the rubber balloon animal that curled beneath Brian Bosworth’s helmet. Every Sunday, it seemed, was a showcase for the latest in designer neckwear.

Standing in the Giants’ locker room recently, safety Deon Grant and wide receiver Devin Thomas became nostalgic when neck rolls were brought up. Grant’s eyes widened.

“Growing up, man, everyone wanted a neck roll,” he said. “I mean everyone. It was the thing. Neck rolls were hot.”

“I had one,” Thomas said. “Did you?”

Grant, who went to high school in Augusta, Ga., laughed.

“I was in the ’hood, so I don’t even know what kind I had,” he said. “But I had one. Absolutely. Everyone did.”

Despite their undeniable popularity, however, neck rolls — much like parachute pants, Members Only jackets and bolo ties — faded away. And now, even with an increased focus on head and neck injuries in the N.F.L., there has been no indication that the La-Z-Boy — Thomas’s term for the headrest-style neck roll Bryan Cox made famous — will return to prominence.

“You would think you might see them more now,” Giants tight end Jake Ballard said, perhaps a touch wistfully. “Maybe they’ll make a comeback.”

It seems unlikely. Bare necks abound in the N.F.L. these days, and a scan of the Giants’ locker room shows little in the way of natty napes. Justin Tuck and David Baas, who have been recovering from burners, a common neck injury in football, had smaller neck rolls attached to their shoulder pads recently but conceded they were poor imitations of the old-style models.

Unlike, say, the pad sported by the always fashionable Eric Dickerson, Tuck’s current version lays flatter. Think more crew neck than turtleneck.

“This is nothing,” Tuck said with a wave of his hand. “In college, I wore the big kind.”

Referring to the training staff at his alma mater, Notre Dame, he added with pride, “They told me I had a long neck, so that’s why I needed one.”

Now, Tuck and Baas wear a neck roll because it ostensibly helps them avoid a recurrence of their injuries. Baas, the Giants’ center, said he believed the neck roll kept his neck more stable, while Tuck said it was difficult to tell if the neck roll had any preventative value. “It may just be peace of mind,” he said.

Straub was involved in a 2003 study that examined three different types of neck rolls and ultimately concluded that “they’ve never been shown to be effective,” he said, adding: “In a lab, they seem to be able to control the head, at least a little bit. But no one has been able to show that on a football field.”

Joe Horrigan, a vice president and historian at the Pro Football Hall of Fame, listed other equipment fads (the tinted visor, wristbands worn on forearms, etc.) and noted that there were two things that could never be ignored when it came to N.F.L. fashion. “First, there’s the intimidation and drama factor,” he said. “And the fact that this is a copycat league. If one person does something or wears something, others will see it and think it works.”

The neck roll, it seems, fell into the second category as a desired item that probably had little functional value. Almost every player polled in the Giants’ locker room had a neck roll story from his earlier football days. Defensive tackle Rocky Bernard wore one in high school and college, and loved it. “I had one of the fat ones,” he said.

Defensive lineman Dave Tollefson asked for one in high school because, he said: “I was skinny, and it made me look bigger. I just wanted to look mean.”

Linval Joseph, another defensive tackle, said he loved watching Mike Alstott, a former Tampa Bay Buccaneers fullback, because of the bulky battery pack that appeared to jut up from his shoulder blades. Alstott, whose career ended in 2008 because of neck injuries, did not even have one of the throwback neck rolls, but Joseph said he liked it because “he had that bulk; it made him look huge.”

Joseph said that neck rolls probably disappeared because the game had sped up and equipment had been altered to allow players to keep pace. Linebacker Michael Boley, who said he never dabbled with a neck roll in his younger days, agreed, saying most players today want pads that are light and allow for movement.

Shouldering an inner tube, then, is not exactly desirable.

“How am I going to run with guys with all that hanging on my neck?” Grant said.

Sentiments like Grant’s are why it seems the neck roll may be destined to meet the same fate as Willie Lanier’s externally padded helmet. Although there is plenty of fond reminiscing for the colorful collars of the old days, most players seem content to leave them there.

Of course, some never quite understood the attraction in the first place. Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes laughed long and loud when asked if he had ever worn a neck roll.

“A neck roll?” he said with a shake of his head. “I don’t even wear gloves.”