ATLANTA — Atlanta Falcons quarterback Kirk Cousins faced fourth down late in practice Wednesday and his first target, wide receiver Darnell Mooney, was double-covered. The same was true of running back Bijan Robinson.
Cousins saw tight end Charlie Woerner one-on-one with safety Jessie Bates III on the right sideline and decided to play the ball out. Bates got his hand on the ball, but it bounced into the arms of the falling Woerner, leading to a touchdown.
The Falcons were attacking hard, only Cousins wasn’t watching, he was looking at a giant screen showing a replay, he wanted to make sure Woerner was on the field.
The touchdown was confirmed and Cousins began to celebrate.
This summer, for the first time, the Falcons installed two giant video boards next to the practice field at their training camp. They and several other teams use this technology to analyze plays in real time — which loop until the next play — rather than waiting until practice is over. This process allows mistakes to be identified and corrected much sooner, but there are drawbacks.
“I’m sure that will catch on in the league over time,” Cousins said. … “I’ll look over and a teammate might ask something, and I’ll say, ‘Wait a second, I’m trying to watch this clip.’
“So it’s a great resource. I think it unlocks some of the mysteries.”
The Los Angeles Rams began using the screens in 2018. Rams coach Sean McVay said he got the idea from coaches who worked with Jon Gruden when he was with the Oakland Raiders, as well as coaches who worked with Jim Harbaugh at the University of Michigan.
“It was really a good thing for us,” McVay said. “To have that, (And) have (player) really use it. Coaches use it to be able to correct in real time, so to speak.”
Falcons coach Raheem Morris has been the Rams’ defensive coordinator for the past three seasons, and that’s how the screens ended up in Atlanta. Morris made sure one screen was set up in time for spring OTAs — and two for training camp.
McVay isn’t sure who first used them, but he has a theory as to why they’re popping up at more and more practice sites around the league.
“All good coaches are good thieves,” McVay joked. “So I stole it from Coach Gruden, and Raheem stole it from us.”
Minnesota Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell was also on the Rams’ staff with McVay and Morris, including when they won Super Bowl LVI, and O’Connell brought the idea to Minnesota.
The Detroit Lions, Philadelphia Eagles, Seattle Seahawks and Houston Texans all use video boards in training camp. The Carolina Panthers started using them for the first time this summer. The Green Bay Packers had some of them set up during minicamp, but not in training camp.
“I don’t want to use it in camp because I don’t know who’s in the stands,” Packers coach Matt LaFleur said.
But LaFleur plans to reintroduce it later in the season.
“I think the more immediate the feedback is, the more useful it can be,” he said. “In the season, I think it’s a little easier to use because you’re usually playing in a block of five or six games where the emphasis is on offense and defense, and you can look at a few things that way.”
In Atlanta, the screens are mounted on posts near the sides of each end zone. The Falcons have set up giant poles behind both end zones and along the sidelines with cameras aimed at them to capture the entire field. Those cameras send video directly to a server that uploads it to the team’s internal system.
In recent years, coaches have been able to access this video on tablets after training.
That’s still possible, but now the video clip of the last play is also being transmitted to two 80-square-foot screens on the sidelines facing the field. This is thanks to the work of Falcons video director Jake Stroot and his team. Atlanta has video staff manning tents under all three cameras, each of which houses two monitors.
“(To) “When you get that immediate feedback, you can make those corrections in real time and iterate something so you don’t leave something on the turf and have to wait until the next day,” Morris said. “That immediate feedback is really important to us.”
Some players use it more than others. Cousins swears by it, while other Falcons said it hasn’t necessarily been as useful for them. In Los Angeles, Morris said it was sometimes difficult to get All-Pro cornerback Jalen Ramsey “off the board to the next play.”
Houston Texans guard Shaq Mason said the boards are so helpful that they could become a problem.
“I actually try not to look at it anymore because I make a play and then I come back to the huddle and I’m looking up the whole time to see what I did,” Mason said. “It’s very helpful, but it can also be detrimental because you’re looking at the last play instead of the next one.”
“You can definitely use it, but it can harm you.”
Ruke Orhorhoro, a rookie defensive lineman for the Falcons, said he will use the video boards to see what techniques might be effective when attacking the quarterback.
“If I felt like I got through that, I would take a quick look at it,” Orhorhoro said. “And then I would say, ‘Okay, if I had done it that cleanly, I would have gotten through that.'”
At a recent joint practice, Rams quarterback Dresser Winn watched Matthew Stafford and the first team offensive line play the Los Angeles Chargers in El Segundo, Calif. After one play, Winn turned and looked up – and then noticed that the Chargers didn’t have a screen like the Rams did at their training camp at Loyola Marymount University.
“I’m not going to pretend that I can see everything all the time,” said Mike LaFleur, the Rams’ offensive coordinator and Matt’s brother. “Sometimes I focus on one or two things to understand that and really get that video, that picture that’s playing in your head so you can coach the guy you’re supposed to coach.”
“It’s one thing to go into a meeting room, but even coaches who sit there for 10, 15 minutes can have long days when they’re sitting in the back of the room and not the one coaching. With these players, you don’t know exactly what they’re always hearing in that moment, but if you can do that in real time on the sideline, I think that’s great.”
Mike LaFleur joked that he “wish we didn’t talk about the screens” because they provide a “competitive advantage.”
“I’m going to keep stealing whatever I think is really good in LA,” Morris said, “because it gives me a sparkling piece of jewelry in my home.”
ESPN Rams reporter Sarah Barshop, Texans reporter DJ Bien-Aime and Packers reporter Rob Demovsky contributed to this report.
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