NFL season start: More visibility through helmet technology – Sport

If you’ve always wanted to be a quarterback in the NFL, we recommend the “Pro Era” virtual reality experience. Just be careful: when two 150-kilo forces of nature rush at you, you might end up jumping backwards – and landing on the couch, because in real life, with VR glasses on, you’re still in the living room and not on the field. It still feels real: stadium atmosphere, game situations, touchdown passes; and even if it’s a video game and designed to be fun, there are many moments when you realize: Wow, things can move quickly on a football field! It’s not that easy to keep track of everything!

The questions that American football experts are currently asking themselves, especially in times when the physical abilities of athletes are largely measured, are the following: Why does one professional make a pass under pressure and another doesn’t? How do you manage to decipher the opposing defense and recognize the free teammate? How does one dodge the onrushing opponents – and the other gets knocked over and injured? Incidentally, this is also an emerging thought in virtual reality football: after three tackles by the giants, you would probably be badly injured in real life.

Some teams in the National Football League (NFL) have therefore introduced a technical innovation in preparation for the new season, which begins on Thursday: a camera on the quarterback’s helmet during practice games, which films his field of vision and captures voices via microphone. “They really hear everything I say,” reported Kirk Cousins, who moved from the Minnesota Vikings to the Atlanta Falcons during the summer break thanks to a $180 million contract over four seasons, and explained: “Those were the moments when I was alone with the guys; now I’m being spied on, like in the secret service.”

At the CES technology trade fair in January, the capabilities of this camera (DJI Action 2) could be examined. It starts in the “huddle”, the circle in which the players discuss the next move. Everything can be heard, not just whether Cousins ​​​​is calling the right tactic and whether all the teammates really hear it. But also: How does he say it? How do his colleagues react to it? This is the spying aspect that Cousins ​​​​is not entirely comfortable with, because of course the coaches gain additional knowledge – but the players feel it is an intrusion into a sacred bubble that previously belonged only to them. “Now the whole club is involved,” says Cousins, who cheers on his colleagues in the huddle and sometimes blows the whistle.

Technical aids reinforce the trend towards lawn chess

The second, even more exciting part: the play itself. You can see (almost) in real time (in real life everything happens 15 percent faster than in a video game) how a play develops, what a quarterback could see. Could because the camera captures the field of vision and not the gaze. “90 percent of the time my helmet and thus the camera are aimed at a defender.” “But I look somewhere else out of the corner of my eye,” says Cousins. The camera lens is therefore not only a means of improving the playmaker, but also for his teammates and the coach, because they also see what the quarterback is doing at certain moments. not sees. In other words, in those moments when viewers in their living rooms throw up their hands in the air after seven slow-motion replays from seven different perspectives and ask themselves: How could the quarterback have missed the completely free teammate?

To put it simply, the footage shows something like this: a play was designed so that the quarterback could observe two potential pass receivers on the left side of the field, in order to, in the best case, throw the ball to them – so he had no chance of seeing the free teammate on the far right, not even out of the corner of his eye. In this case, the coaches could now decide: should they adjust the running path of the teammate on the right so that he comes into the quarterback’s field of vision – and will he then still be as uncovered as before? Do you change the playmaker’s field of vision by moving the players’ running paths further towards the middle? Or do you teach the quarterback to turn his head at a certain moment? The trick is that the receivers also see the footage and notice when they can and do not want to be spotted by the passer.

American football is sometimes referred to as lawn chess, and technical aids are reinforcing this trend. In Atlanta, not only the offensive players, but also the defenders see the footage and can adjust their actions. For example, by asking themselves whether they can block the quarterback’s field of vision; or do they want to be beaten because the passer and receiver are in perfect harmony. The Atlanta Falcons are currently considering attaching a camera to the helmet of a central defender so that they can also see the opposite perspective.

“The more feedback, the more analysis, the better,” says quarterback Kirk Cousins

In the NFL, Miami, Atlanta and Pittsburgh are currently using this quarterback helmet camera. The Falcons actually have the sixteenth (!) perspective: during training, six cameras are available on the sidelines, plus nine more that are mounted higher up for bird’s eye views. One training session provides around 20 hours of raw video material.

“It’s complete surveillance,” says Cousins. “The more feedback, the more analysis, the better,” he says, but admits, “I’m also a nerd.” In the first game on Sunday, the Atlanta Falcons will face the Pittsburgh Steelers, who also work with quarterback cameras. Whether any major changes can already be seen is one of the exciting questions at the start of the season.