One Chip to rule them all. One Chip to find them. One Chip to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
The chip I am talking about is not a potato chip, although 28,000,000 pounds of them are consumed every Super Bowl Sunday. I am talking about a data chip, and the “them” I am referring to is the National Football League’s (NFL) game day footballs.
On Sunday, ESPN reporter, Kevin Siefert, released information stating the NFL is nearing finalization on plans to insert data chips into game balls that will be used in the 2016 preseason and Thursday night regular season games, according to a league official.
John Kryk of the Toronto Sun stated hours earlier on Sunday that the NFL plans on using the data gathered by the chip to aid in deciding whether or not to narrow field goal posts.
“The discussion has really revolved around narrowing the uprights,” NFL V.P. of officiating Dean Blandino told Kryk. “That would be one way to affect both the extra point and the field goal. [Success rates] have continued to climb over the years as our field goal kickers and that whole process has become so specialized, from long snapper to holder to kicker. . . . We’ll do some studies this year.”
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The collected data will tell the league how close each kick comes to the uprights and the projected number of kicks missed if the uprights were narrowed. Last season, the NFL increased the difficulty of the kicking game by moving the extra point back to the 33-yard line, a decision that saw a moderate reduction in conversion rates.
Field goals are a different story. In 2015, NFL place-kickers netted 84.5 percent of their field goal attempts. That percentage ranks as the second-best rate in league history.
Blandino noted that the narrowing of the uprights could come as soon as the 2017-2018 season. “You never know,” said Blandino. “We’ll see what the data tells us. The [Competition Committee] will discuss it and then make a recommendation for 2017 if they feel that we need to go that route. But I wouldn’t know at this point, without seeing how it goes this year.”
The kicking game is extrmemely valuable to NFL teams, just ask the New England Patriots and their ex-kicker, Adam Vinatieri, who crushed two Super Bowl winning kicks in a three year span.
The chip will play a much larger part in gathering relevant data outside of the kicking game as well, aiding in ball placement.
After all 32 NFL teams were informed about the chip inclusion – barring the approval from veteran quarterbacks who decided if the ball feels or flies any different with or without a chip – the NFL plans on moving forward and using the chips as an aid in determining if a player crossed the goal line as well as making first-down calls.
Not only will the chip-loaded footballs be an aid in developing the game, it could completely alter the outcome of games where confusion with an official’s call could oneday mean the difference between a win or a loss.
The NFL is an ever-changing sport. Every year there is a new idea or theory behind making the game more efficient, safe and exciting. Implementing these data chip footballs could be the next step in revamping America’s most popular sport.