As the NFL continues to nudge toward the inevitable expansion of tablet use from still images to video, some coaches worry that the adjustment will dramatically change their jobs.
“I want to get beat on the field,” Panthers coach Ron Rivera recently told Kevin Clark of TheRinger.com. “I don’t want to get beat because someone used a tool or technology — that is not coaching at that point. I work all week, I’m preparing and kicking your ass. All of the sudden you see a piece of live video and you figure out, ‘Oh crap, that’s what he’s doing.’ And how fair is that?”
Some would say it’s fair because the potential advantage is available to everyone. In the same way Rivera’s opponent can have a Eureka! moment during a game, Rivera can do the same thing. And Rivera’s planning during the week will include planning to make a Rocky Balboa-style switch back to southpaw at the exact time the other coach says, ‘Oh crap, that’s what he’s doing.'”
Rivera separately is concerned that using tablet video will result in the NFL doing other crap, when it comes to technology.
“Where does it end?” Rivera told Clark. “Can you get text messages or go out there with an iPhone and figure out where to go? What are we creating? I know there are millennial players, but this is still a game created 100 years ago.”
Rivera is right. But 100 years ago, no one was paying the NFL $400 million over five years for in-game product placement. And the NFL’s Surface sugar daddy surely wants to have its baby used to its full capabilities. Curiously, the conversation doesn’t make that connection. Then again, maybe it doesn’t have to.
“The coaching video on the sidelines is about [the] sponsorship with Microsoft,” one high-level team source recently told PFT. “That being said, we should look to embrace it at some point. Just come out and say it. Let’s not sugarcoat it.”
Rivera’s concerns notwithstanding, other coaches don’t see the addition of video to the tables as a major change.
“I think it benefits the offense a tick more and yet the information we’re gathering right now from the pictures is pretty clear,” Saints coach Sean Payton recently told PFT Live on NBC Sports Radio. “The pictures that we look at on that tablet give us a pre-snap picture, we get a post-snap picture, then we get an end zone picture. So you kind of have a good idea as to what is taking place and so just putting it on a rolling video so you can actually see it in it’s entirety I think probably aids the offenses a little bit more.”
Still, Payton envisions limitations on how widespread the sideline video will be.
“I know this, I’m never going to want to have a team sitting on the sidelines with 15 or 20 of these tablets during a football game,” Payton said. “So if and when that thing gets passed I think it’s going to be a small number, maybe two on each side of the ball [and] one for special teams.”
Payton also knows one other important thing: Adding video to the tablet won’t have a major impact on the partnership with the manufacturer of the tablet.
“With regards to marketing for Microsoft is going see any difference between a coach or player looking at photos or a coach or player looking at video. In fact, it would look exactly the same,” Payton said.
He’s right. It would look the same. However, using the tablets for greater purposes will serve only to increase the opportunities for the tablets to malfunction. So if/when (when) video is added to the tablets, everyone involved needs to be sure that they always work.