DETROIT — A lot of things have changed for Chris Olave, including the things he cares about most, which is why he might have looked a little different on the field during Sunday’s 31-30 loss to the Detroit Lions.
Not as a player, mind you. Olave looks primed for an even bigger season than he did a year ago after hauling in 10 passes for a career-best 182 yards in the loss. New Orleans Saints quarterback Tyler Shough persistently looked his way while guiding the Saints out of a 21-0 hole, and Olave almost always delivered.
No, what changed was literally his look. The somewhat funky-looking Guardian Cap he was wearing over his helmet — the one, in years past, that he alluded to not wearing because of the way it looked. There are more important things to Olave than looks right now.
“Y’all know all the head injuries I’ve had in my career,” Olave said. “… I’ve got kids now. I want to be able to live the long game. It’s not all about football; I want to live a regular life after I’m done with football. I love my kids to death, so I don’t really care how it looks no more. I just gotta throw it on, and it did me good today.”
Neither Olave’s talent nor his concussion history is new. He has been a steady, excellent presence whenever he’s been on the field as an NFL player, with three 1,000-yard seasons in his first four as a professional. The one outlier happened in 2024, when he missed more than half the season with multiple concussions — enough that had him considering an early retirement.
The two things have been hard to disentangle. Even this offseason, when Olave signed a massive extension with the Saints, there was language written into the contract protecting the Saints’ investment in the event of a serious head injury.
And then there was his family to consider, and the long view. So Olave made the decision to favor function over form.
The Guardian Cap is a padded soft shell that attaches to the outside of the helmet — essentially adding a second, exterior shock absorber to the regular headgear. It makes the helmet look especially large on a player, and while players have had them available to them for years, Olave had never worn one in a game before Sunday.
But this summer, he started wearing them for training camp practices. And there was a recent moment in practice when Olave went up for a deep ball and came down hard, hitting his head in the process. He immediately felt the difference.
“From that point forward, I said I was gonna wear the Guardian Cap in the game,” Olave said.
Sunday against the Lions, Olave was one of the main engines driving the Saints’ comeback.
He entered halftime with three receptions on six targets for 40 yards, lamenting the missed one-on-one opportunity he had on a deep shot downfield where he waited for the ball to get to him rather than going up and getting it.
A switch flipped in the third quarter when, scrambling to avoid the rush, Shough saw Olave snap his route off upfield. Olave hauled in the pass for a 47-yard gain to set up the Saints’ first score of the day.
That was the start of a huge second half and overtime for Olave, who snared each of his seven targets in the game’s closing chapter — including a brilliant leaping 42-yarder over a defender down the middle of the field that caused him to stay down on the ground for a moment and get evaluated in the medical tent.
Olave’s back was acting up and his calves were cramping — so badly, in fact, that he decided to play most of the fourth quarter and overtime without socks, knowing he is going to get a fine from the NFL’s uniform police.
“He was grinding the whole game,” Shough said. “I was really proud of his performance, just who he is.”
A big, bulging helmet and no socks didn’t throw Olave off. His new contract will help pay for the fine, but the rest of the new look may keep him on the field making plays — and healthier, happier for everything that comes after that.
