Aug 15, 2019; Baltimore, MD, USA; Chain crew members walk on the field prior to the game between the Green Bay Packers and Baltimore Ravens at M&T Bank Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Evan Habeeb-USA TODAY Sports
NFL: Preseason-Green Bay Packers at Baltimore Ravens
The NFL is slowly moving towards a plan to replace the chain gang with new technology to measure first downs.
The senior vice president and chief information officer, Gary Brantley announced that the league will experiment with the ‘Hawk-Eye’ technology from Sony during preseason games. While it is unlikely that the technology will be ready in time for the regular season, the 2025 season is a realistic debut.
Sony was named the official technology partner of the NFL on Wednesday, with the goal of enhancing the experience for fans, and assisting the job of the officials.
Neal Manowitz, president of Sony, has since said “The NFL has incredibly high standards and really what we’re talking about in this relationship is together, at the highest level, how do we change the future of sports. How we change line to gain is a great example…”
“We get the creators of the game, all of the people of the ops team, the coaches, the players, how do we get that community as close as possible to our engineers, and how do we bring them and then ultimately provide a much better experience for fans.”
When it comes to actually implementing the technology needed to replace the chain gang, Brantley has said it is a unique process for each stadium. “We’re just really getting to a place where this system is as accurate as possible and really calibrating across our multiple stadiums…We have multiple stadiums with multiple dimensions inside of those stadiums with different age. So we’re really just going through the installation of putting in the infrastructure and making sure these cameras are installed.”
The change from the traditional sideline sticks is in hopes of increasing the accuracy and efficiency at which downs are measured. While human error is a part of any game, the NFL is looking to control what they can.
Manowitz added, “we’re reducing a significant amount of time, 40 seconds for each time of use that basically is making the game that much more impactful…the system is accurate down to less than half an inch, which is incredibly, incredibly accurate.”
Not all is lost for old school fans however, it is believed that even with new technology, the chains may survive as a backup role.
