[ovulator]

I'm sure there is huge value to coaches. Pull up our list of plays for 4th and one in the redzone. That list then shows immediately what personnel are best for it and who of those personnel may be out of the game right now.

QB just threw an interception, lets look over the play that just happened to see what he overlooked and how we can adjust.

The problem with technology in this case, is that there is no room for error. You have 40 seconds to call the next play, if you swipe wrong, something crashes you don't call a time out to call IT, you are just fucked. So 100% reliability will trump convenience, no software or hardware is 100% reliable.

[jlv2]

I suspect what makes someone a good coach is that they already know to a high degree what personnel are best for a particular situation on the field, and don't need some algorithm to pick for them.

[hackuser]

That's a really good point. Experts have much different needs than other users, because much of the knowledge is available via a much faster system better integrated with their thinking (their memory).

I wonder what experts would actually want out of a sideline tablet system.

[jewbacca]

I think the "what play should we run"/"what personnel should we use" stuff is probably totally internalized, between the head coach, the offensive/defensive coordinators, and all the positional coaches.

The primary use of the tablets is to consume and analyze new information generated during the game.

But, practically, due to NFL rules, the only thing that the tablets are allowed to do is display still photos of past plays. [0] They've replaced B+W printouts of photos in this role.

Coaches can get the photos faster on the tablets than with the printouts, which can be a huge advantage. But if the system is unreliable, then they might get them slower, or not at all, and waste valuable cognitive capacity on the fucking goddamn malfunctioning tech that is keeping critical information from them in massively time-sensitive situations.

That I think is what's happening with Belichick here. He's notorious for preferring reliability over almost all other considerations. Though I imagine that if full replay video were allowed, it might have gone further before hitting his "fuck this" point.

Also note that there are also team staff (often the offensive/defensive coordinators -- the 2nd level of command, immediately after the head coach) in booths up above the field, with (I think) no technological restrictions, in radio communication with the sideline staff.

---

[0] http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2016/5/24/11715128/nfl-competiti...

For an illustration of what all this "analyzing past plays" stuff actually means in the context of football:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3ASyQwLNAQ&t=5m30s

[trynewideas]

Per Belichick, the experiment was to deliver portable video to the sideline. Per the NFL, the tablets allowed coaches to quickly queue, annotate, and loop game video play-by-play, as commentators and producers can do in the broadcast booth.

[pwthornton]

Coaches are extremely limited in what they are allowed to do with electronic communication on the sideline. They use the tablets exclusively for viewing aerial images from the last drive.

"The tablets only allow access to a Sideline Viewing System app that provides the photos of recent plays."

http://www.geekwire.com/2014/heres-nfl-players-coaches-use-m...

The NFL used to print out these photos and coaches would go over them on the sidelines. The Surface is supposed to be much faster for this and allow for some other functionality. Usually the offensive coach and his starters are looking at the images while the defense is on the field and vice versa.

The NFL does not allow coaches to use laptops to perform this kind of data analysis live during games.

[kleinsch]

The scenarios you list are valuable, but they have old school paper based ways to do both of those. That's what Belichick is rolling back to.

[dhimes]

And old-school computers in the booth. Just not tablets on the sidelines.