In each NFL stadium, there are six ultra-high definition cameras which, coupled with computer vision software, can Measure the distance between football and a first line.
And in each NFL football, There is a chip the size of a room This, associated with the radio-frequency identification (RFID), transmits data on the movement and the location of the ball.
And yet, when Josh Allen plunged into a heap of Buffalo Bills and Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday, Search for a fourth and 1 crucial conversion in the AFC championship matchNone of the technologies were used to determine if Allen had resumed a first descent.
Instead, two referees sprout from the sidelines – a beyond the 40 yards line, one unless it is. They decided, after manual measures and non -conclusive reruns, that Allen had not reached the line to win. Kansas City took over, then scored, and won. Therefore the controversial decision, which has has been dissected Since then, since then, has rekindled a thorny debate: why, in 2025, with technology infiltrating all sports, the NFL is always based on humans with obscured views to make heat calls at the time for If the bullets have crossed certain lines?
The unsatisfactory answer is similar to What was in 2021: Technology is not enough Quite good, and the nature of football complicates it.
Critics argue that this could still help NFL officials on pieces like Josh Allen Sneak. “This is a perfect example that raises a reasonable question,” explains John Pollard, a former vice-president at Zebra Technologies, the NFL’s follow-up supplier. He and others have argued for years that the RFID follow-up (the microchips), perhaps in concert with optical follow-up (cameras and computers), “could be the recipe for a specific ball spot” .
But the League, as vice-president of emerging products and technologies, Matt SWENSSON said to Yahoo Sports in 2021has not yet been “ready to press the trigger.” (SWENSSON and an NFL spokesperson refused to answer follow-up questions this week on why not.)
Before the 2024 season, the NFL competition committee and the “Future of Football Committee” approved Hawk-Eye’s tests, a optical monitoring system similar to that which instantly detects Si.
Hawk-Eye, however, could not help playing on Josh Allen, in part because it rests on cameras, who need a breathtaking view of the ball.
It was tested this last pre-season and “in the background” throughout the regular season of 2024, not as an automatic observer, but rather to replace the chain gang. For the moment, it still forces human officials to spot the ball; It is only then that he practically measures the distance at the first line.
Everything that is more impactful or immediate is “complicated”, as SwenSson and others have said, because football differs from other sports in two important ways.
First, obstructed views limit the potential of optical monitoring. The bullets disappear in the arms of a player or a bunch of body. If Hawk-Eye systems cannot see it, they cannot (yet) be able to place it on a digital and perfect field of the field.
And second, the location of the ball is often not the only consideration. On many games, officials must determine the location of the balloon When or before the knee of a player, the forearm or another part of the body affects the soil or when the officials govern a dead game. This said that Dean Blandino, a former vice-president of the NFL officer, has always been “the big obstacle” for the purchase of automated bullets.
Any real-time tracking system should not only detect the ball, but also each part of the body of the bunge carrier, and each whistle to exclude progress forward has stopped. He should then communicate a final conclusion to a ref. Some believe that this will never be possible. SwenSson declared in 2021 that one day “it could be possible”, but he admitted: “We are not yet there.”
The quasi-consensus, instead, was that rereading reviews were the first border. “A first logical step would be to marry data and videos,” said SwenSson. A replay manager could, for example, determine when the knee of a runner was broken – or when Josh Allen’s progress was arrested – then use follow -up data to locate the ball at this exact moment.
When asked this week why the NFL had not yet implemented such a system, a spokesperson for the League would not comment.
In 2021, however, SWENSSON indicated that the margin of error in monitoring technology – up to 6 inches – was a main reason for reluctance. “We are not at ease to use the follow-up of the ball alone,” he said, “to say,” he crossed the plane. “”
Precision is still not there
RFID monitoring technology has been in place since 2017, when the NFL has inserted the micropuits in the football balls. The chips, which are also affixed to the players of the players, have unlocked a Back -free data. They are the source of “next generation statistics” and all kinds of measures that teams now use to increase the evaluation of players and performance sciences.
They were not initially designed to help the referees. But by 2021, said Pollard, they were able to “support (the) location of the ball, or to identify where a ball comes out of the limits, or can potentially cross a line of goal”. Often, the NFL has played with the way this “location” could help official. They started by using it to follow where the boots stole out of the limits. In the circles informed in technology, we expected that, for a long time, RFID follow -up would contribute to the observation of the balls.
In 2025, however, his margin of error is still “up to 6 inches”, confirmed a spokesperson for Zebra. It is more than half the length of football.
In 2021, SWENSSON mentioned “a few centimeters, with a level of consistency”, as a potential threshold for the use of the purchase of bullets. Critics, of course, point out that any margin of error could still be taken into account on Replay. If, for example, the follow -up data told an NFL official in New York that the ball that Josh Allen rocked was less than 6 inches in diameter or unless the line to be won, the call on the ground – Anyway – could be held; But if the technology showed the 8 -inch ball on the line, Buffalo could have had a first try.
We do not know how seriously the NFL explored this type of application. Its recent communications focused on optical monitoring. “For future seasons,” said the league in a press release Last summer, “Hawk-Eye and the NFL will collaborate on the development of new official generation technology by taking advantage of Optical Monitoring Technology in Hawk-Eye Gain to examine and take critical rules on pieces.”
Any new technology generally undergoes years of rigorous tests, often behind the scenes, to project involuntary consequences.
“Unfortunately – or fortunately,” says Pollard, “a situation like Sunday increases everything very quickly and says,” Let’s get rid of. »»
In fact, Josh Allen’s play is exactly the type that several experts have cited as a potential tilting point. They explained that the implementation of any new system required an analysis cost-benefit: how many incorrect calls, not flexible in the context of current systems, be corrected? And this clarification, as Blandino said, “would replace the cost and labor, research, technology (required)”, without interrupting the flow of sport and confusing or disillusioned viewers?
Absent “a widespread trend”, as Blandino said, or “a problem that happens with each game”, the only thing capable of switching the scales was a high -level incident in a eliminatory match. Several people mentioned The non-appeal of the RAMS-SAINTS NFC 2019 championship matchwhich led to one (since then) rule allowing coaches to challenge the successful interference penaltiesas a previous one.
“This kind of thing,” said Blandino to Yahoo Sports in 2021, during a conversation on the monitoring of technology and the ball spot “, should happen to make it progress to a point where (the NFL) would think to implement it. “