[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.