ATL: Conference Championship Week - Chiefs in SB

[MickeyDavis]

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[Treebeard]

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A thousand years ago, back when I was a wee lad.... It seemed to me that the chains were brought out at least once on every long run-driven drives. That of course, delayed the game, but not long enough to take a commercial break - a mortal sin in the modern NFL. So the modern NFL has strictly limited that particular institution as much as league-driven time management will allow. Technology can help, but the ancient chain system probably stays forever, as not every youth league, high school, or even many college programs could make that jump.

[Mags FTW]

Chip in ball, sensor in whistles. When whistle is blown, chip tells you where ball goes.

[MickeyDavis]

Whistle blown doesn't account for forward progress. Chip in ball is fine. Determining when knee is down or forward progress stopped not so easy

[Treebeard]

Whistle blown doesn't account for forward progress. Chip in ball is fine. Determining when knee is down or forward progress stopped not so easy

Or elbow, shoulder, butt, helmet(?) When each of those body parts hit the ground came into consideration in all of this weekend games.

[RRyder823]

Whistle blown doesn't account for forward progress. Chip in ball is fine. Determining when knee is down or forward progress stopped not so easy

Outside of the obvious Fail Mary how horrible the replacement refs were at simply spotting the ball really made me appreciate just how much better the real refs were.

Not only did it take them an extra 5-10 seconds (which really messed teams up with play calling and rhythm) to actually spot it but they were consistently off by 2 yards or more.



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[Mags FTW]

Whistle blown doesn't account for forward progress. Chip in ball is fine. Determining when knee is down or forward progress stopped not so easy

The chip will tell you, even in a pile, how far forward the ball got. The sensor in the whistle would be the cutoff.

As far as knee down, the chip helps in that department because the refs will no longer have to look at where the ball is to mark it. They would only need to look at the runner's body and focus on blowing their whistle as soon as they are down.

[Kerb Hohl]

Whistle blown doesn't account for forward progress. Chip in ball is fine. Determining when knee is down or forward progress stopped not so easy

The chip will tell you, even in a pile, how far forward the ball got. The sensor in the whistle would be the cutoff.

As far as knee down, the chip helps in that department because the refs will no longer have to look at where the ball is to mark it. They would only need to look at the runner's body and focus on blowing their whistle as soon as they are down.

So now you're relying on a ref to blow the whistle literally as a body part touches the ground, which is pretty hard to see sometimes in the first place. And, you know, a guy can move/roll like an entire foot or yard before the ref blows his whistle in .05 seconds.

How would you spot the ball? Sure, a laser can maybe help in deciding a first down but what good does the chip do if the ball is supposedly at the 34.34719409 yard line? Can a ref accurately spot it? Say that the ref misses the spot the chip tells him by .1 yards on 3rd down and then the team misses the first down by .1 yards on 4th down.

[humanrefutation]

Remember when DeFilippo was a darling among potential coaching hires? He just got canned again by the Jags.

Shurmur, DeFilippo, and now Stefanski got buzz as potential head coaches after working as OCs in Minnesota. Shurmur failed in NY. DeFilippo never got that chance and how has been canned twice in a row as OC of his team. Now Stefanski gets the nod in Cleveland, and if I was a betting man, I wouldn't count on him being a success there.

Meanwhile, Doug Pederson and Matt Nagy all get nods as HCs and lead their teams to great seasons after serving as Andy Reid's OC. But Eric Bieniemy doesn't get a shot.

That just doesn't make sense to me.

[Mags FTW]

Whistle blown doesn't account for forward progress. Chip in ball is fine. Determining when knee is down or forward progress stopped not so easy

The chip will tell you, even in a pile, how far forward the ball got. The sensor in the whistle would be the cutoff.

As far as knee down, the chip helps in that department because the refs will no longer have to look at where the ball is to mark it. They would only need to look at the runner's body and focus on blowing their whistle as soon as they are down.

So now you're relying on a ref to blow the whistle literally as a body part touches the ground, which is pretty hard to see sometimes in the first place. And, you know, a guy can move/roll like an entire foot or yard before the ref blows his whistle in .05 seconds.

How would you spot the ball? Sure, a laser can maybe help in deciding a first down but what good does the chip do if the ball is supposedly at the 34.34719409 yard line? Can a ref accurately spot it? Say that the ref misses the spot the chip tells him by .1 yards on 3rd down and then the team misses the first down by .1 yards on 4th down.

1) Is it perfect? No, but it's better than what they are doing now.

2) Whoever spots the ball for the game would have an earpiece connected to the person running the program on a laptop up in the booth. They would hold the ball and the person in the booth would say either, "forward" "back" or "stop".

And bitching about .1 yards is silly because the center is going move the ball around that much before every snap.

[vegaspacker]

The ball chip idea is pretty interesting.

How would the best way to integrate a standard?

1st, you would need quite a few chips to account for various angles and directions of which the ball is being carried/held.

2nd, how to determine the end of forward progress?
A pressure sensor would not work: contact with the ball or the ground might be indiscernible.
Proximity to an X axis could give false positive/negatives as forward progress is not actually always determined by the ball touching the ground.

3rd place those 'tracking markers' that they use in CGI all over the players uniforms and maybe an accurate determination of a downed body part along the x axis.

4th... Where do you put those damn sensors, and how do ensure that they cannot be manipulated or disrupted by normal traffic/play or intentional shenanigans. I'm looking at you Bill Belicheck.

We are at a paradigm shift where some technology has made it nearly impossible to accept a confirmation without bias. How the elimination of this is how the NFL makes this game enjoyable as far as possible.

Perhaps we could elevate the integration of technology to determine holding, PI, and other game changing penalties that that have made this dramatic sport a joy and bane for us all.

It would be very expensive.... Yet I think they have the $$.

[ibanezjp]

Just saw of the 4 teams left we have the lowest odds in Vegas of winning the owl. I would think we have better odds than Titans at least?

[Treebeard]

Just saw of the 4 teams left we have the lowest odds in Vegas of winning the owl. I would think we have better odds than Titans at least?

I wonder if some of that is Tennessee has been notably improving the second half of the season, while the Packers have remained fairly consistent (by comparison). Plus, no team seems to have figured out how to stop Henry.

[vegaspacker]

Just saw of the 4 teams left we have the lowest odds in Vegas of winning the owl. I would think we have better odds than Titans at least?

Disclaimer:. Please remember that past performance is no indication of future success.

[vegaspacker]

Tennessee is on a roll. They beat the Pats and literally dominanced Baltimore.

Tannehill has really given Henry a chance to go wherever/whenever he wants. He is a magnificent specimen. AJ might be the reel Hollywood, Corey Davis is talented. They have two TEs with a bunch of ability as well. Their offense is definitely one of the best of the rest.

[Kerb Hohl]

Just saw of the 4 teams left we have the lowest odds in Vegas of winning the owl. I would think we have better odds than Titans at least?

https://www.teamrankings.com/nfl/

http://sagarin.com/sports/nflsend.htm

Super Bowl odds are generally just a simulation/parlay of the remaining games for a team to win the Super Bowl with maybe a bit of "let's bait the public" stuff added in.

For example, the Packers title odds in week 3 of the season are basically based on 10,000 simulations of the season (using something similar to Sagarin or TeamRankings to set the odds of each game) and the % chance that the Packers win it based on all of those simulations.

The links I provided above are essentially what set the game lines.

So the Packers and Titans in theory have basically the same odds of winning it all depending on what Vegas' algorithm has. If it's Packers/Titans, the Super Bowl game would be roughly an even spread. If not, the Packers or Titans would have to navigate through 2 games where they're a touchdown underdog.

But then there's the slight tweak usually either from public or recent performance, of which the Titans have gotten a slight edge.

[Kerb Hohl]

The chip will tell you, even in a pile, how far forward the ball got. The sensor in the whistle would be the cutoff.

As far as knee down, the chip helps in that department because the refs will no longer have to look at where the ball is to mark it. They would only need to look at the runner's body and focus on blowing their whistle as soon as they are down.

So now you're relying on a ref to blow the whistle literally as a body part touches the ground, which is pretty hard to see sometimes in the first place. And, you know, a guy can move/roll like an entire foot or yard before the ref blows his whistle in .05 seconds.

How would you spot the ball? Sure, a laser can maybe help in deciding a first down but what good does the chip do if the ball is supposedly at the 34.34719409 yard line? Can a ref accurately spot it? Say that the ref misses the spot the chip tells him by .1 yards on 3rd down and then the team misses the first down by .1 yards on 4th down.

1) Is it perfect? No, but it's better than what they are doing now.

2) Whoever spots the ball for the game would have an earpiece connected to the person running the program on a laptop up in the booth. They would hold the ball and the person in the booth would say either, "forward" "back" or "stop".

And bitching about .1 yards is silly because the center is going move the ball around that much before every snap.

Current system:

Inexact position as decided by the ref running in from the sideline. However, this is generally pretty fairly reviewed 90% of the time.

Proposed system:

The ball is spotted with a sensor by the whistle, called at an inexact time. A ref stands on the field being given direction by a guy 500 feet away telling him to move it inches forward or back, making the fans sit there and watch this exhilarating experience that will still be inexact.

-----------------------------

Give me the current system if those are my options.

It's something where I'm sure people smarter than me can come up with a reasonable solution with the technology available but I think people make this seem way too easy. My best guess is that you'd have to have some sort of laser or exact yellow line or underground sensing system that syncs up with all camera angles or something to that extent so that replay can better judge if it was a first down or touchdown.

Other than that, just deal with the inexact nature of it because it would slow the game down. The problem with that is a game will eventually be decided by a terrible human spot on 2nd down and a team missing by a slim amount of yards on 3rd or 4th down. But you don't want to review that because of flow of the game.

[Mags FTW]

Current system:

Inexact position as decided by the ref running in from the sideline. However, this is generally pretty fairly reviewed 90% of the time.

Proposed system:

The ball is spotted with a sensor by the whistle, called at an inexact time.

The current system is even more inexact because the ref must look for when the runner is down, and then try to track and find the ball with his eyes, AND THEN look at the ground and to set the spot.

[Kerb Hohl]

Current system:

Inexact position as decided by the ref running in from the sideline. However, this is generally pretty fairly reviewed 90% of the time.

Proposed system:

The ball is spotted with a sensor by the whistle, called at an inexact time.

The current system is even more inexact because the ref must look for when the runner is down, and then try to track and find the ball with his eyes, AND THEN look at the ground and to set the spot.

There is a better solution somewhere but all I am really saying is there are a ton of variables/sensors that would need to be used. You may need to install a camera system or below-field sensors with a laser that points to the spot on the field that the ref can spot it...but again, you still have the pesky problem to solve of when the runner was actually down. The idea of a ref radioing down and saying, "back, back, forward, back, stop!" would not work.

Also you'd need to completely remove the humans from setting/handling the first down chains. How exact is it for a random dude that is probably too out-of-shape to run the sidelines to arbitrarily line up his stick exactly in the middle of the football from 15 yards away after a quick first down? That makes the actual first down markers very inexact.

[Mags FTW]

Current system:

Inexact position as decided by the ref running in from the sideline. However, this is generally pretty fairly reviewed 90% of the time.

Proposed system:

The ball is spotted with a sensor by the whistle, called at an inexact time.

The current system is even more inexact because the ref must look for when the runner is down, and then try to track and find the ball with his eyes, AND THEN look at the ground and to set the spot.

There is a better solution somewhere but all I am really saying is there are a ton of variables/sensors that would need to be used. You may need to install a camera system or below-field sensors with a laser that points to the spot on the field that the ref can spot it...but again, you still have the pesky problem to solve of when the runner was actually down. The idea of a ref radioing down and saying, "back, back, forward, back, stop!" would not work.

Also you'd need to completely remove the humans from setting/handling the first down chains. How exact is it for a random dude that is probably too out-of-shape to run the sidelines to arbitrarily line up his stick exactly in the middle of the football from 15 yards away after a quick first down? That makes the actual first down markers very inexact.

The chip system removes chains and measurements:

-Kickoff is returned. Ref blows whistle when he sees runner down. Software records where the ball is when the whistle is blown.

-Booth operator radios to an official where the ball should be placed, and the computer then knows the first down is 10 yards from that position. No need for chains.