Tackling Facial Hair: Tom Brady Scores More With a Beard

The days of big, burly, sweatshirt-clad football players with a serious lack of style and grooming are over, as a shocking 89% of players have some sort of facial hair happening. And these guys don’t just rock five o’clock shadows. You can find dreadlocks, long hair, medium hair, buzz cuts, bald heads, goatees, mustaches, chinstraps, and full beards scattered across the football field. Outside the stadium, they pair their trendy facial hair with some serious suit swagger, too. The NFL player is now a full-blown look, but who knew it would help them score on the field as well?

A new study by men’s grooming site West Coast Shaving has done a complete roundup of the latest hair trends among NFL players and their teams. As the sole football fanatic here at Yahoo Beauty, I found it particularly fascinating that your grooming routine has serious payoff. After examining every roster photo in the 2014 NFL taking note of their facial hair, it turns out there is a direct correlation between facial fuzz and performance.

Top rated quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers, Jay Cutler, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger, Andrew Luck, and Matt Stafford all played consistently better when sporting some scruff—with ratings anywhere from 6 to 16 points higher with facial hair than without. And my very own Tommy B and the New England Patriots are in the lead for the team with most 5 o’clock shadows. Perhaps Movember and No-Shave November are on to something.