Following a controversial spot of the football in last Sunday’s AFC championship game that many felt cost the Buffalo Bills a possible victory over the Kansas City Chiefs, renewed support for electronic help in measuring first downs has been voiced among media and fans.
Some support may be on the way, though not necessarily utilizing the kind of technology many are imagining. The NFL is considering an electronic system that would help determine if the ball was spotted for a first down. However, an official would still place the ball manually and a microchip would not be used for measuring a first down, according to The Washington Post’s Mark Maske.
Yet such a system wouldn’t necessarily prevent a situation like the one faced by the Bills against the Chiefs last week.
On a crucial fourth-quarter play, Buffalo’s Josh Allen appeared to gain a first down on a quarterback sneak. Yet officials placed the ball just short of the line to gain and replay review could not conclusively show that Allen had gotten the first down.
The Bills were eventually ruled short and turned the ball over on downs. The Chiefs subsequently scored a touchdown five plays later that gave them a one-score lead. Kansas City eventually won the game, 32-29, and is pursuing a third consecutive Super Bowl championship next week.
Prior to this season, the NFL wanted to continue testing the technology in question, an optimal camera tracking system, before deeming ready for use. But many aspects of the system were considered ready and the league could decide to try it next season.
“The whole effort was to begin taking a look at it, to see what worked, what didn’t work,” NFL officiating rules analyst Walt Anderson told the Washington Post last August.
“You certainly had some of them that went very smoothly,” he added. “And then we had others where obviously there were some challenges. All of that is part of the learning curve. We’ll end up continuing to collect data [on] that. It’ll be a topic for the competition committee in the spring.”
Yahoo Sports’ Henry Bushnell explained that a coin-sized chip is already in the NFL game ball and has been for years. However, it’s not used to measure first downs and spot the ball because the placement of the football isn’t the only factor in determining whether the line to gain was reached.
“On many plays, officials must determine the ball’s location when or before a player’s knee, forearm or other body part touches the ground or when officials rule a play dead. That, said Dean Blandino, a former NFL vice president of officiating, has always been ‘the big roadblock’ for automated ball-spotting.”
However, optimal camera tracking nor a chip in the ball would likely have resolved the situation faced on the Bills’ crucial fourth-down play against the Chiefs, as Bushnell explained.
“… obstructed views limit the potential of optical tracking. Balls disappear in a player’s arms or a pile of bodies. If Hawk-Eye systems can’t see it, they can’t (yet) place it on a digital, inch-perfect map of the field.”
So a perfect system of spotting the ball and first down measurement likely doesn’t exist, despite the best efforts of technology wizards and football executives. But if close enough is the best the NFL can hope for and such decisions could be rendered in a timely fashion during a game, that might be enough for the competition committee to implement it for the 2025 season.
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