Old school office paper has been on its way out for 15 years, so it seems long overdue that NFL teams stuck in the 1960s finally advance with the rest of the world. Since the beginning of time, or since the beginning of called plays in football, paper playbooks have been used by teams to install offensive and defensive schemes. Playbooks are usually 5 inches thick, with chicken scratch that looks like Egyptian hieroglyphics, and are a hassle to fumble through. Using tablets as playbooks seems obvious, but it’s easy forget that iPads and their competitors only came out four years ago.
Teams were using tablets for game tape before, but it was as basic as dragging the low quality avi or jpeg files on iTunes. PlayerLync is a company that is looking to streamline the process of using the digital playbook. Instead of awkwardly trying to drag and drop every play sheet pdf, and scouting video of every team to only the quarterback’s tablet (because he’s the only player that matters), teams can seamlessly upload position specific game tape to all of their different units in one instance. Offensive coordinators can have a certain set of tapes set for quarterbacks and receivers, and another one for lineman. Defensive coordinators can have one for the front seven, and one for the secondary. All the coaches have to do is drop the selected content and it will automatically load onto their players’ tablets, assuming it has a wireless connection.
Carrying around the massive playbook that needs to be reprinted every week seems like a huge waste of time and effort. Before, only super ambitious players would request tape, and would have to sit in a dark room by themselves. Now, even the lazy players can have all the tape they can handle in the convenience of their homes, Vegas suites, or wherever they happen to be.
PlayerLync even has a feature that tells the coach if the videos have been viewed or not, which makes it seem like a teacher checking if the kids did their homework. While super lazy players weren’t going to do extra work if they didn’t have to, the convenience of studying will make them at least more likely to do it.
PlayerLync is tailor made for football teams, but it can apply to other sports as well. Baseball hitters and pitchers can have cutups on each other before the start of a series. A pitcher has more downtime than the position players, so PlayerLync would presumably be used more by them than batters, but studying batters poolside would still beat having to sit in the team clubhouse.
PlayerLync sounds like a cool idea, and I wouldn’t mind having my homework pushed out to my tablet without any effort, but I question how much it will actually be used in basketball and hockey. They both have 81 game seasons and Xs and Os aren’t as imperative in those sports as in football. That’s not to say studying film isn’t important in basketball and hockey, but film study in football is absolutely necessary with few exceptions.
It’s reported that the PlayerLync service costs up to $50,000 a year, so only professional teams, and well-off college programs would be able to drop that kind of coin. Still, it’s not like NFL teams are strapped for cash and half of the league is already implementing the software. It’s a copycat league; and coaches aren’t going to be ok with ceding competitive advantages. One could reasonably expect just about all of the teams to adopt some kind of digital playbook within the next two years.
In competitive leagues where teams borrow strategies and ideas to keep up with each other, PlayerLync is a secure app that makes it difficult to be hacked and have information stolen. The PlayerLync app is not available in any app store for the public; and teams have to get it securely installed on their tablets in order to use its secure network.
It will be interesting to see what competitors emerge to challenge PlayerLync in the digital playbook industry. Hudl seems like a cheaper option, better tailored for lower budget teams, like high schools and recreation leagues, without access to 80 tablets. At the very least, we can count on a whole lot of paper being saved and a lot less time wasted printing 500 page playbooks for a football team. And it doesn’t seem too farfetched to think that less wasted time spent on setting up studying X’s and O’s will lead to a better on-field product for fans.