NEW YORK – Remember those binders filled with freshly-printed black-and-white photos NFL coaches used to flip through on the sidelines during games? The ones they used to show players the formations opposing teams were using?
They are a thing of the past.
After introducing the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 tablet last season, the company is set to unveil the latest version of the product, the Surface Pro 3 to NFL sidelines. Starting with Sunday’s Hall of Fame game, featuring the Minnesota Vikings and the Pittsburgh Steelers , the new tablets – specified with tweaks and additions – will be available to every NFL team throughout the season.
And in 21 preseason games, the NFL will be testing two new features that could eventually be incorporated into the regular season: instant video streaming for coaches to use on the sidelines, and instant replay reviews by referees.
“Now, instead of waiting for the referees to go under the hood, waiting for New York to call to make a ruling, they will be able to manipulate the image on the tablet and say: ‘Look at this angle. The guy is out of bounds,’ ” said Jeff Tran, Microsoft’s director of sports and alliances from the devices and studios marketing group. “And he’ll be able to share it with the other referees in the crew, and they can make the determination on the challenge.”
Tran and executive producer at Microsoft Todd Stevens said that depending on how the preseason trial run goes, the replay feature could be brought before the competition committee for permanent use. The same goes for the film streaming, which could revolutionize the way coaches instruct their players during breaks in the action.
“It really allows them to be more efficient during the game,” said Renie Anderson, senior vice president, sponsorship and partnership management at the NFL, in a phone conversation. “They can analyze formations. They can analyze schemes in real time. It’s in high-definition and it’s in color. It’s a vast improvement over the old printed papers that we used for years.”
Another change, Tran said, is a pen that allows coaches and players to diagram on the screen “ under any weather conditions. ”The pen function allows coaches to annotate on top of high-resolution images in different colors to help players visualize the instruction. During the preseason trial, the pen will also allow coaches to annotate over film clips, too.
There’s also an application on the Surface Pro 3 that is a digital version of a whiteboard that coaches use in meeting rooms to diagram plays.
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