At the beginning of each week, members of the New York Jets wander over to a computer in the player's lounge and select video clips they'd like to review ahead of the next game. But rather than burning these clips to a DVD they'll watch on their laptops or sitting in a darkened room staring at a screen, players have the films sent to their Apple iPads.
The Jets are but one example of how the ubiquitous tablets are changing how teams throughout the National Football League prepare for, and review, games. The iPad is quickly replacing traditional "films" and even printed playbooks in the NFL, much like it is replacing charts in many airliners. A growing number of teams find the devices are faster, cheaper and easier than ripping thousands of DVDs and compiling reams of paper. Tablets also provide far greater flexibility in when, where and how players and coaches prep for upcoming games, allowing them to, say, review annotated game clips or new plays just about anywhere.
"All the video that our players want to see, whether it's all the third downs that the Patriots ran or all their red-zone plays, they'll have all that stuff on their iPads," said Jets video director Tim Tubito.
The Baltimore Ravens and Tampa Bay Buccaneers have purchased 120 and 150 64-gigabyte iPad 2s, respectively, in recent months and transferred their playbooks to the devices. The Jacksonville Jaguars and Arizona Cardinals love the technology, which also is making inroads in collegiate football. It remains to be seen how deeply the iPad will penetrate the NFL, but it is emerging as a versatile, and vital, tool within the league. Five teams outlined to Wired.com exactly how they have embraced the devices. Another dozen said they use the devices but declined to explain in detail exactly how.
The ability to edit and watch game day video from virtually any location -- one team's defensive coordinator kept up with team practices from his hospital bed -- is among the iPad's greatest selling points for the NFL, and it is changing how players, coaches and support staff prepare for games. As soon as the iPad was introduced, the Jets were using third-party applications to transfer files from DVDs onto tablets. Now it uses Hudl, a system developed by Agile Sports that allows professional and collegiate teams to view game film clips, also known as cutups, on a secure online network. Players can select the videos they want using a password-protected computer in the player's lounge. The team also sent video of every practice to offensive consultant Tom Moore, who lived in Hilton Head, South Carolina, before recently relocating to northern New Jersey.
The team has since 2006 been searching for ways to ease its dependence on DVDs. First it used SD cards to put game footage on PlayStation's PSP portable gaming devices. Then it began using iPods -- a method Major League Baseball has used for years -- before trying Archos, a software company specializing in Android-powered tablets that also was used by the Ravens. Tubito can't say yet whether the team has saved any money by ditching DVDs, but he did say he would have ordered as many as 6,000 DVDs so far this season. The team's embrace of the iPad means he needs a fraction of that number to satisfy any Luddites on the team.
The Jaguars also have embraced tablets. Players and coaches break down game tape on their iPads using XOS Digital's Lightning program. The software allows teams to study practices and games using features such as fast forward and rewind controls and visual tools like arrows in order to diagram plays. The program also features text so coaches can add notes and other information. It's proven so popular that 54 players and 34 coaches and administrators use it, even though it meant buying their own iPads.
Shuttle, a similar software application developed by DVSport, is another option. Shuttle, like Lightning, gives users full control options with which to view practice and game footage. Craig Davis, vice president of sales and marketing for DVSport, said such features are invaluable to coaches, who may watch a single play a dozen times in succession.
"If you sat in a room and watched a coach watch video, they'll go through that video 15, 20 times," Davis said. "They'll be on play 15 and they'll watch that running back go through that hole, then they'll watch what the linemen do [on the same play], then they'll watch what the quarterback does. They'll watch that four seconds of play –- we call it 'scrubbing' -– five, six, seven, eight, nine times until they get the information they want from it."
The speed and accuracy with which coaches can tailor videos to specific needs or players makes the iPad an appealing tool. A spokesman for the Arizona Cardinals acknowledged the team uses iPads for playbooks, scouting reports and video editing. The Indianapolis Colts use the devices in a similar fashion, and wide receivers coach Frank Reich makes sure his players have the team playbook, gameplan and schedule on their tablets. The San Francisco 49ers recently partnered with Ironworks Sports to use its video player for distributing and viewing game film.
Different teams want different things from their iPads, which is why third-party vendors like Ironworks Sports tailor their software to each customer. Ironworks writes its own code to ensure teams get exactly what they want.
"There is a very specific way that teams pull in their video and attach statistics to it," said Ironworks' founder Charlie Denison. "There's also a very specific way that they edit the video and also a very specific way they want to look at the video. So, if people are just basically using the QuickTime player and just kind of throwing some stuff on top of that, that doesn't provide the optimum experience for how teams want to look at video."
By writing its code from the first line, Ironworks boasts it can provide a level of accuracy and speed better than anything on the market. It's the speed and accuracy of the video and its delivery that quickly made DVDs, whiteboards and written documents like scouting reports suddenly seem antiquated.
For instance, the Jaguars estimate they spend roughly $50,000 per year to produce written scouting reports. Mike Stoeber, the team's assistant director of football technology, said the weekly scouting report given to each player typically runs 1,200 pages long. Before the start of the current season, the Jaguars decided to give each player video edits, or cutups, of games and practices via XOS's Lightning program. Now players can study their weekly film work while being treated in the training room or relaxing at home. Interim head coach Mel Tucker used his iPad to study film while in the hospital recuperating from knee surgery in late September.
"We used DropBox and put all the scouting reports for him up there, so his iPad was his office," Stoeber said.
Cutups are as far as many teams say they've gone with tablets. The jump to digital playbooks has been slower, but it is expected to occur within a few seasons.
"If we don't do it next year, it'll probably be very soon [thereafter]," the Jets' Tim Tubito said.
Security is the biggest impediment to widespread adoption of digital playbooks. Teams like the Jaguars are trying to determine how best to protect their playbooks, while others are looking to the league to lead the way.
"They're not going to let us put something out there in cyberspace without investigating and saying, 'This is what kind of encryption you need,'" said the video director of one AFC team who did not want to be identified discussing a potentially sensitive topic. "You [also] have the ability to wipe out iPads if something happens."
For what it's worth, an NFL spokesman says the league allows each team to determine its own security measures for playbooks, be they digital or printed.
Security is a top concern even for more routine things like films. Every team that has embraced the iPad has fitted the tablets with so-called time bombs, which allow IT personnel to remotely wipe the information on a tablet if the device is lost or stolen -- or if the player is cut, traded or becomes a free agent. The Buccaneers, for example, upload weekly playbook installments and videos to the team's in-house network. If an iPad disappears, the IT department clears the data remotely. If the iPad is recovered, it must be physically connected to a computer to restore the data.
The Ravens give its players three attempts to enter passwords. After the third try, the tablet wipes itself clean, taking any video clips, team info and league policies with it. The team keeps its playbook and other information on Rackspace, a hosting and cloud computing firm. Players have a four-day window in which to download that week's gameplan. (Gameplans live on the server indefinitely on the coaches' accounts.) Once the clock strikes midnight on the Monday following a game –- or on Tuesday following a Monday nighter –- the gameplan for that contest is wiped out.
Nick Fusee, the Ravens' IT director, noted head coach John Harbaugh wasn't thrilled about putting team information in the cloud. But the upside is it eliminates the hassle and expense of maintaining servers.
Switching to iPads also saves money, he said. Perhaps not up front, but by the third year the team will save a "significant" sum. He declined to offer specifics, but said dropping the cost of printing master playbooks -- those 500-plus page beasts assigned to players in training camp -- and in-season scouting reports and gameplans "is a game changer."
"The upfront cost of the iPads and developing the app as well as other costs involved are negated in two years of use," Fusee said. "Even if we do a hardware refresh after two years, we will still be ahead of the game in terms of what we would have spent on printing for three years. Even with doing a hardware refresh every two years, we are able to save money. If we can wait to do a refresh after three seasons, then we save a good deal of money."
Teams are still discovering ways to use the iPad, and possibilities are abundant. Several franchises have begun using a DVSport application feature called "'hot folder." It uses the iPad's Wi-Fi capability to provide instant updates from the team's video coordinator –- often new cutups. When an update is available, the file is transcoded, moved to the hot folder and sent to each player's iPad. This way, players can leave their tablets just about anywhere in the practice facility, hit the field or the weight room and return to find them loaded with new cutups and other info.
Other software programs allow coaches to diagram cutups, much like commentators scribble over TV replays. Coach's Office, a football software outfit in Holder, Florida, is slated to release DrawOnSlides by February. The app lets teams upload pages from a playbook and re-diagram them within an iPad's photo album. Virtually any part of the playbook can be assessed and, possibly, altered.
"With this, they already have the play drawn up, or maybe just the formation –- the offense and the coverages," said Stan Webber, founder of Coach's Office. "Instead of being at that whiteboard and drawing that stuff up first and then putting in the play, they can already be there."
The season's not even over, and already many teams are looking ahead to next year to determine how to more tightly integrate the iPad into their training regimens.
"We want to find an app that's functional, that really allows a player to treat it like a playbook," said the Jets' Tim Tubito. "It's going to give him the ability to make notes and it's going to give them access to any kinds of changes they can make, where it's not a stale image they can't do anything with. A lot of guys takes notes in their playbooks. We want to be able to give them a full playbook feel."
One thing he'd like to see is a feature that allows coaches to send voice notes with each cutup. Dwan Edwards, a defensive end for the Buffalo Bills, would like to see similar advancements, and believes the convenience and ease of tablets provides players with additional motivation to do their homework.
"Having an iPad, for some guys, might increase the amount of time they watch film," Edwards said.
Still, don't expect to see iPads on the sidelines anytime soon. NFL rules bar electronic communication devices from coaches' booths, sidelines, locker rooms and any other team-controlled area on game day. For now, coaches will have to rely upon conventional photographs to analyze on-field formations and their opponents' tactics. But Brian Rolapp, the chief marketing officer at NFL Media, admitted in-game analysis technology can evolve.
"If you want to get a snapshot of the formation down to your offensive coordinator who happens to be on the sideline, why do you have someone running a Polaroid down?" he said. "Why can't it be instantaneously put on the sideline?"
Such a chance can only happen, he said, with the proper security measures and professional guidelines in place to maintain "integrity of the game." He also noted that bringing new technology to the field depends upon finding the right technology partner. The NFL's contract with Motorola expires at the end of this season. Could Apple be ready to take the field? Rolapp wouldn't say, and Apple declined to comment.
Rolapp emphasized that the league's five-year-old digital media committee, co-chaired by Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder and Patriots CEO Jonathan Kraft, will continue to think of ways in which on-field technology can be enhanced. Considering the zest NFL teams have for absorbing information as efficiently as possible, a rapid acceleration in the iPad's use throughout the NFL isn't long off.
