New Technology: How fast is Mike Wallace

[gafin]

How quickly can he accelerate? We may soon know the answer.

How quickly did the receiver accelerate? What was his top-end speed? How far did he run and how much separation did he really get against the defensive back?

Clearer answers than ever before are coming to your TV screen this fall — and it's only the beginning of the NFL's foray into player tracking and advanced statistics that could change the way fans, and even teams, look at what happens on the field.

Every NFL player will wear two tiny sensors in his shoulder pads this season in the first "live" phase of a project the league hopes will enhance the in-stadium experience as well, with further media expansion and integration with teams' existing training technology likely down the line.

"What you're going to see is touchpoints that happen throughout the league," Vishal Shah, the NFL's vice president of domestic media and business development, told USA TODAY Sports.

"Certainly, the most comprehensive and impactful might be to the fans themselves. But it's going to touch areas of our league and give us a deeper understanding of our game."

The NFL partnered with Zebra Technologies, which is applying the same radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology that it has used the past 15 years to monitor everything from supplies on automotive assembly lines to dairy cows' milk production.

Work is underway to install receivers in 17 NFL stadiums, each connected with cables to a hub and server that logs players' locations in real time. In less than a second, the server can spit out data that can be enhanced graphically for TV broadcasts with the press of a button.

If a player finds another gear in the fourth quarter of an important game, the sensors will pick it up. And if he's running out of gas, the sensors will reveal that, too.

"For those of us that are coaches from our couches, we're like, 'Oh, come on! That guy was open!' Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't," said Jill Stelfox, general manager of Zebra's location solutions division, which produces its MotionWorks software.

"If we know closing distance of a defender and an offensive guy, you can really know whether that hit would be made or whether he really could've made that play."

TV networks have experimented in recent years with route maps and other visual enhancements of players' movements. But league-wide deployment of the sensors and all the data they produce could be the most significant innovation since the yellow first-down line.

About 20 receivers will be placed around the bands between the upper and lower decks of the 17 stadiums that were selected for use this year. They'll provide a cross-section of environments and make sure the technology is operational across competitive settings before full deployment.

All 15 teams that host Thursday Night Football — Atlanta, Baltimore, Carolina, Chicago, Cincinnati, Denver, Green Bay, Houston, Jacksonville, Miami, New England, Oakland, San Francisco, St. Louis and Washington — are on the list, along with Detroit and New Orleans.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sport...-shoulder-pads-zebra-speed-tracking/13382443/

 

[maralieus]

How fast is Mike Wallace?? Find out this fall...when you watch the Dolphins games. But really that sounds kinda cool, except I don't really know wtf "touchpoints" are.