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The Panthers' Luke Kuechly leaves the field after suffering a concussion in 2015. The NFL held a concussion intervention with seven teams, but didn't identify which teams. USATSI

The NFL held a targeted intervention with seven of its teams in order to reduce their rate of concussions. Dr. Allen Sills, the NFL's chief medical officer, said Tuesday that the league identified seven teams that had a higher incidence of preseason concussions than others, and sought to address the issue. 

"In six of those seven clubs, the numbers did go down," Sills said, according to ESPN.com. "Those seven clubs had 23 practice concussions as a whole in 2017, down to nine in 2018."

Sills did not identify which seven teams were the subjects of the intervention. The league did say, however, that preseason concussions were reduced from 91 in 2017 to 79 in 2018, and that this year there were zero concussions sustained on kickoff plays during the preseason. (The league tweaked its kickoff rules this offseason in an effort to reduce the rate of concussions on what had been one of the most dangerous plays in the league.)

"We are cautiously optimistic about that result," Sills said. "We are pleased to see that number go down, but we still have a lot of work to do. We are continuing a more in-depth analysis of the concussions that did happen during the preseason. Doing some of the same work we've been doing during the regular season, looking at video and seeing what the practice environment is -- seeing who was injured in what role. We are going to be doing more of a deep dive into that."

He also noted that many NFL players are switching helmets to those rated as safer by the NFL. The league handed out a flyer of helmet rankings during the preseason, with certain helmets being deemed unsafe to wear. Players were given a one-year grandfather clause to switch to safer helmets, but the number of players wearing helmets deemed unsafe dropped from 230 in 2017 to just 40 in Week 3 of this season.