The National Football League has partnered with Zebra Technologies for the 2014 season to monitor movement of players using real-time location systems in shoulder pads. The shoulder pads have radio frequency identification transmitter chips that communicate with receivers that have been installed throughout the stadiums.
The 15 stadiums that host Thursday Night Football games have the technology, and there will be 17 football teams participating in the upcoming season. The shoulder pad chips will collect data related to position, speed and distance.
"Zebra MotionWorks captures player location and motion data to provide real-time performance intelligence, enhancing team training, scouting and evaluation, as well as the overall fan experience," according to the company. "As a Next Gen Stats provider to the NFL, we capture high-speed player data and convert it into real-time, usable statistics."
The data will also be helpful in understanding how movement and speed contribute to serious injury so as to better protect players and prevent long-term consequences of such injuries. In recent years, the number of concussions has decreased, but there continues to be an increase in other injuries.
Timothy Gay, Ph.D., a professor of physics at the University of Nebraska and the author of the book "Football Physics: The Science of the Game," acknowledges that football players have gotten much bigger and faster over the years. In the video above, Gay explains that the laws of physics indicate that the force behind a hit depends on the contributions of body weight, speed and how quickly a player stops moving.
"These are very strong forces," Gay told NPR. "This is why they call football a contact sport."
Zebra Technologies
The shoulder pads can deliver a wealth of information, such as the distance between players, the speed of players, how much yardage they cover on the field, etc.
While there is a lot of focus on concussions in football, disc herniations are a common and debilitating injury for NFL athletes. Offensive linemen are the most vulnerable.
"Faster, heavier, more aggressive players will absolutely increase the impacts," said Vassilis Koliatsos, M.D., a neurology professor at Johns Hopkins University. "They are quite severe. But right now they don't have scientific evidence about what links concussions to long-term brain injuries. There's even some concern that weaker, nonconcussive hits — although poorly defined — may also have something to do with it."
According to the NFL, much of the interest in the data to be collected by the shoulder pad technology was to increase interest in the game.
"Working with Zebra will give fans, teams, coaches and players a deeper look into the game they love," NFL Vice President of Media Strategy Vishal Shah told Forbes. "Zebra's tracking technology will help teams to evolve training, scouting and evaluation through increased knowledge of player performance, as well as provide ways for our teams and partners to enhance the fan experience."
The fan experience will be enhanced, but the data collected will contribute to enhancing the quality of life for players long after the game has ended. Data collected will enable coaches and trainers to understand what contributes to more severe injury. With this knowledge, teams will be able to better develop strategies and equipment to minimize and prevent injury.
