Signal Stealing Made Easy?
What should the NFL do to assure fans an incident like Spygate will never occur again? Throw some microphones on the centers so everyone can hear the names of your plays, that way teams don’t have to steal the play-calls — they can just have them.
The NFL has asked teams to consider allowing their centers to wear a microphone which would allow fans at home to hear what’s going on inside the huddle. Of course, doing so would be optional. For whatever reason, the Bengals decided to let their center wear one last Sunday when they played the Patriots. Maybe they thought they had nothing to lose since the Pats would steal the plays one way or another no matter how secretive they tried to be?
All joking aside, I don’t see why any NFL team would agree to this. If you broadcast the name of your play to the public and then go out and execute that play, aren’t you letting the opponent in on a few secrets? I suppose teams could always use it to their advantage and not even run the actual play that they call in an attempt to throw the opposition off, but I don’t see why coaches would want to make more work for themselves during an already brief week of preparation.
I guess a feature like this is cool for people at home, but the signals are likely going to be complete Gibberish to the casual fan anyway. If this becomes popular I’ll be extremely surprised.
Source:
Microphones on centers create strategic concerns [ProFootballTalk]
