Technology is growing rapidly in the NFL, with use of the tablet to still images to video. But not everyone is happy about these changes, as many coaches are afraid that it will cause their jobs to be less important.
Current Carolina Panthers head coach is among those that despise the new technology.
“I want to get beat on the field,” Ron Rivera said to 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 believe that the use of the technological advancement would help level the playing field and could be a positive thing in the end. Rivera fears that the use of the tablet video will only lead to more unnecessary technology that he deems useless.
“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.”
Ultimately, it seems that the use of tablet video is a business thing that has arisen from the NFL’s sponsorship from Microsoft. “The coaching video on the sidelines is about [the] sponsorship with Microsoft,” one high-level team source said to NBC’s Pro Football Talk. “That being said, we should look to embrace it at some point. Just come out and say it. Let’s not sugarcoat it.”
Other coaches in the NFL see the new gadgets as a good thing. New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton offered support for the idea in a recent conversation with NBC Sports Radio.
“I think it benefits the offense a tick more and yet the information we’re gathering right now from the pictures is pretty clear,” Payton. “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.”
Payton still has his reservations though, and has concerns as to just 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,” he stated. “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.”
Regardless of the sentiments of NFL coaches, tablet video is here to stay and the amount of technology used in the game will only continue to grow as time goes on.
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*Featured Photo (above) credit to USA TODAY Sports
