6 Best Mouth Guards for Football: Youth, Teeth, Designs, No-Boil (2024)

Football is a thrilling and beautiful game that thousands enjoy. But the fact of the matter is, it’s also a brutally dangerous sport. One way to give it your all — safely — while playing smash mouth football is to wear a mouth guard.

No safety precaution is 100% effective, but the best football mouth guard will help prevent many of the most common tooth, lip, and gum injuries suffered by players on the gridiron. Before your season gets started, or if you have a young football player in your life, take a moment to read our list of the six best mouth guards for football.

Whether you’re on the field or in the stands, these mouth guards will leave you smiling.

Our Top Picks: Mouth Guards for Football

Short on time? Here’s our quick break down on the six best mouthpieces for football.

A Closer Look: Best Mouth Guards for Football

Leading off our list of the best mouthpiece for football is the Max Airflow 2.0 mouth guard from Shock Doctor. The best mouth guard should not interfere at all with oxygen intake, and Shock Doctor’s unique breathing channel supports up to 10% more airflow. This mouthpiece is also latex, BPA and phthalate free, and it’s a great choice for players with braces.

The mouth guard is made from high-impact polymers with a comfortable bite guard, and no boiling is required to get the perfect fit. And don’t miss the 40 color and design options to match your personal style on the field. Players really do breath more easily with Shock Doctor, and it holds up well throughout an entire season, based on feedback.

Wearing Shock Doctor also helps players speak and be understood while they’re on the field, users say, and a strap is included with purchase.

The best youth football mouth guard for Pop Warner comes from Vettex. This one-size-fits-all mouthpiece is made from high quality rubber, and available in 10 color choices to match your child’s uniform.

A permanently attached strap is included with purchase (we know how easy these things are to lose). And this is also a great lip guard for kids with braces, according to reports.

What’s best, coaches recommend the Vettex mouth guard, commenting on the breathing holes, the thick and durable strap, and the sizable tooth pad. The guard also protects lips from impact on the bottom of the pile.

And since we know it’s hard even for adults to not chew on their mouth guard while wearing it, parents comment that the Vettex won’t split into sharp edges, which can irritate the gums and mouth.

To fit around braces, for looks, or simply for comfort, some players prefer a football mouthpiece with teeth. For these reasons, we like the Sparkling White Smiles professional sport mouth guards. This precision-fit mouthpiece is also BPA, latex, and phthalate free, with no color additives used. 

All this makes Sparkling White Smiles mouth guard among the most all-natural products in our ranking. There’s also has a thick cushioning base, with strong chew resistance. Overall, the mouth guard absorbs impact well, and based on feedback, it’s comparable to higher-end and much spendier mouth guards prescribed by dentists. 

It’s not a super tight fit, some say, but many prefer that in a lip guard, anyway. But otherwise, the guard is comfortable and most can hardly tell they’re wearing it. One especially aggressive player says that with this mouth guard, they get the cushion they need to hit and get hit as hard as they can.

To show team solidarity, intimidate an opponent, or simply express your personal style, many players like a guard that not only protects their teeth, lips, and mouth, but one that also features different designs. With this in mind, Loudmouth mouth guards are without a doubt the best football mouthpieces with designs in our ranking.

Loudmouth’s 3D Chrome Grillz mouth guards come in four different looks, including diamond-encrusted top and bottom fangs. Scary! These lip guards aren’t just for looks, though, they’re made from medical-grade silicone, and for convenience, they’re no-boil and one-size-fits-all. 

Including a strap-like tether, Loudmouth guards help players “play like an animal,” based on feedback. And even though some call them a bit bulky, most agree these mouth guards are comfortable.

Made from hi-flow, easily molded gel material, the OPRO snap-fit is the best no-boil football mouth guard on the market. No-boil means OPRO are ready to go right out of the box, with both kid and adult sizes available (no braces allowed, however). Otherwise, all you have to do is bite down and the fit is perfect, based on feedback.

Some caution this might not be strong enough for adults to wear playing full-contact tackle football, but it’s a great pick for kids playing touch football, or for grown-ups playing flag football.

Otherwise, it’s affordable, comfortable, easy to use, and truly does fit straight out of the box, with a special shape designed for breathing and talking.

A mouthpiece with a strap helps keep the guard firmly in place on the field. They also help younger players keep track of the mouth guard. To this end, we say those seeking a mouth guard with a strap should look no further than Under Armour, with a lanyard like “tether strap” included with purchase.

This mouth guard from a leading brand in the sportswear industry is dual-layer gel-fit and no-boil, meaning it’s one-size-fits-all, or at the very least one-size-fits-most, based on feedback. In addition to a strap, the mouth guard has larger air holes and therefore better airflow than many other options on the market.

We also liked to hear it’s a good choice for players who have a sensitive gag reflex, and that it’s a great fit for braces. Special needs players also like the mouth guard.

Our Process

For this guide on the best mouth guards for football, our team spent 5 hours researching the most popular models from over 30 brands and manufacturers big and small. We then read about 150 user reviews (both positive and negative) to discover what shoppers thought about each mower. After comparing this data, we narrowed our list down to the top 6 mouth guards for football on the market. You can count on this research to guide you to a mindful purchasing decision.

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