Could the chain gang — the most arcane part of the NFL’s messy refereeing system — be on its way out?
If the NFL’s next technological experiment proves successful, you have to wonder. On Monday, word came down that the NFL is planning to utilize data-chip technology inside its game footballs during the 2016 preseason.
The data chips could also be used during Thursday night games as well, according to ESPN, and the league has even bigger plans for the data in the coming years.
The Toronto Sun was the first to report the news, stating on Sunday that the league would insert chips into its kicking balls, in an effort to study whether it might be worthwhile to narrow the goal posts in the coming years. The NFL hinted at such intentions in an email to The News, stating that “the ball’s proximity to the goal posts on a field goal or PAT” would be part of the data collected.
NFL teams get GPS-like data that tracked every player movement
But the league has more expansive plans for the data it collects from these chips, which can also measure “how far the ball travels on a particular play,” the league email said. The league made no mention of anything else, although if the chips are accurate and durable, you have to wonder whether the chain gang’s days are numbered. Could a collection of people running back and forth along the sidelines to measure third-and-inches calls ever be more accurate than computer chips?
It’s hard to know whether the league plans to take things that far, of course, and such a project would likely require extensive testing; footballs taking a pounding during games, and a malfunctioning chip would wreak as much havoc on a game as referee human error does.
For now, the data collected from the footballs is part of what the league calls the “next phase of the Next Gen Stats player tracking project,” which began in 2014, when the NFL started placing tracking chips on players to measure such things as velocity and body position.
That data was then delivered to viewers who used the league’s Xbox One video game console app, and certain intriguing stats were highlighted on an NFL.com page dedicated to Next Gen Stats.
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