Avid and the NFL
NFL Teams Adapting Digital Technology to Game Preparations
Baltimore, Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- When the Baltimore Ravens sit down to review their game plan, coaches put on a technological display befitting a Silicon Valley board meeting.
Using high-powered laptop computers, coaches project play diagrams, lists of key assignments, and digital picture-in- picture video on a big screen to help prepare their players for the next opponent.
Such technological razzle-dazzle puts the Ravens at the forefront of a trend that coach Brian Billick says will have quarterbacks wearing virtual reality goggles to scrimmage against imaginary defenses within five years.
``You can't just slap down some overlays and scribble on an overhead projector,' Billick said. ``It won't be long now before we're issuing playbooks on a CD-ROM.'
Like the Ravens, many other National Football League teams use sophisticated software and digital video to help prepare interactive game plans, predict opponents' play-calls and save time.
The Ravens' database of digital video includes every play that's been run in the NFL for the past three seasons and thousands of diagrams of plays, including more than 800 pass route combinations.
Homework on a Laptop
Billick, hired by the Ravens after last season, said before long, he'll be sending diskettes home with the players over the summer with the play book and a picture-in-picture digital video of an assistant coach speaking directly to the player.
``This technology is a great tool for teaching,' Billick said. ``It allows us to simplify an enormous amount of information, make meetings more efficient, and we're finding that the players are picking it up better, too.'
Among other technological savvy teams are the Kansas City Chiefs, Minnesota Vikings, Green Bay Packers, Jacksonville Jaguars and Buffalo Bills, said Dave Grandin, president and chief executive of Avid Technology Inc. subsidiary Avid Sports, which makes digital video systems for 21 of the league's 31 teams.
``Like anything else, the NFL has its leaders and its followers,' Grandin said. ``You'll see that a lot of the leaders on the field are also the leaders off the field when it comes to keeping up with the latest changes.'
Grandin said digital systems can cost from $150,000 to $2 million, plus maintenance costs.
During game preparation, Billick will be able to call up as many as 500 examples of the opponent running a specific play over the past several years. Since it's all digital, he doesn't waste time rewinding videotape. That can be a big savings for football players and coaches, who sometimes watch the same play dozens of times in search of nuances that can be exploited.
More Time
When the Chiefs switched to digital video three years ago, Kansas City quarterbacks were able to watch 40 percent more video in the same time, said John Wuehrmann, the team's director of video operations. Defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham, now the head coach, said it put him five months ahead during the offseason.
``Your biggest enemy in the NFL is time, there's never enough,' Wuehrmann said. ``With the new systems, there's no tape and coaches can edit their own video for team meetings. It really increases productivity.'
Wuehrmann said he has seen a virtual reality system -- a computerized three-dimensional scene that reacts to the user's movements -- that could be adapted for football from architectural uses, although it would have been too expensive.
``We've got the technology to have coaches sit around a table and play out game scenarios with holographic players, but you have to weigh the cost versus the benefit,' Wuehrmann said. ``These systems can be terribly expensive.'
R&D
In Minnesota, where Billick was offensive coordinator before taking the Baltimore job, the Vikings even have a director of research and development.
In that job, Mike Eayrs uses complicated statistical analysis and mathematical probabilities to anticipate an opponent's play call based on the previous sequence of plays.
Rather than determine the probability of what an opponent might run on third-and-10, he'll use computers to analyze what an opponent might call after successive failed runs on the first two downs of the series.
``The buzzword is data mining,' said Grandin, of Avid. ``You're looking at large sequences. The human mind won't discover patterns that involve so many variables.'
Much like the Ravens, the Vikings review these tendencies with their players. ``When we prepare our game plan with all our calls, we list our alerts -- things that happen with at least a 90 percent probability,' Eayrs said.
The Vikings even mix in what individual coaches are likely to call, Eayrs said. In difficult situations, some coaches are likely to resort to plays that worked for them before.
All the statistical analysis and computer wizardry doesn't replace one key variable -- talent, Grandin said. Former Green Bay Packers coach Mike Holmgren, now of the Seattle Seahawks, had a distinctive play-calling pattern, but that didn't often help opponents.
``His attitude was you have to stop us,' Grandin said.
While coaches and executives agree that technology won't make bad teams good, no one will deny that it's changing the way the NFL does business.
``It allows us to simplify, increase efficiency and become even more creative using the greatest technology of all -- our minds,' Billick said.
Aug/13/1999 15:30
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