For more than 100 years, football has been officiated using a simple 10 -yard chain. The so -called chain gang has been the judge and the jury of the sport, ruling whether a ball toured the amount of yards necessary for a team to obtain a first Down, and four more opportunities to score.
But artificial intelligence and new technology could soon cause the chain gang .
In the 2024-25 preseason, the NFL tested Sony’s hawk eye to make calls in “line to win”, the officiant term to measure the 10 yards that a team needs to advance the ball to get a first Down.
Hawk-Eye uses up to 60 cameras, including those used for transmissions, to rebuild all possible angles in a specific football game. That is useful for the referees who use it to scrub through the action framework when they are making play calls, but Sony and the NFL now take it a step further.
Using six cameras food with an 8K resolution (four times more pixels than a 4K camera), Hawk-Eye can now identify the start and finish the ball using artificial intelligence and determine if he traveled the necessary 10 yards. Each NFL stadium is equipped to use Hawk-Eye for the line to win.
“We did a lot of due diligence with the NFL to ensure that we have chosen the correct cameras and the correct placement of the cameras to ensure that our precision was where it should be,” said Dan Cash, managing director of Sony’s Hawk-Eye.
Doing it would reduce the time it takes to the gang of the chain transport the bright orange markers to the field and measure if the ball passed the line to win. Technology could reduce the controversial called in the clashes when the inches can be all the difference.
In the game of the Title of the AFC Conference last weekend between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs, the Buffalo Campo Mariscal Josh Allen hastened to advance in fourth and inches at the beginning of the last quarter. Although it seemed that he could have obtained the first, the officials ruled that he did not.
Kansas City recovered the ball and scored a touchdown on his next trip. The Chiefs would win 32-29 and advance to the Super Bowl.
During the regular season, the fans of Washington’s commanders were in their arms after the officials ruled that the wing closed Zach Ertz did not have a victory for the first attempt, assuring the Pittsburgh Steelers a victory.
And in an infamous 2017 confrontation between the Oakland Raiders and the Dallas Cowboys, the then NFL Generadore not only summoned the chain gang, but also used an index card to govern that the ball touched the necessary line for That the cowboys won a first below.
“Here we are, on the other side of the bay from Silicon Valley, the world capital of high technology, and you get an index card that determines whether it is a first attempt or a fourth attempt,” played by game “Nfl on NBC” the SportsCaster Al Michaels said in the transmission.
About seven years later, that high technology is now coming to the game.

The NFL information deputy director Aaron Amendolia said that Hawk-Eye will also help make 40 second calls faster than get the chains.
“We are going to be much more precise in what we are showing in terms of measurements, but we will also have a faster motion game,” said Amendolia.
Fred Gaudelli, the executive producer of “NFL in NBC”, said he makes it a better television view.
“As the sections of attention become shorter and people have more distractions in life, the faster things can do and reach a final response. I think it’s better for transmission and it’s better for the audience, ”he said.
Soccer fans could also notice a new element for their television view, with hawk eye feeding graphics that recreate the positioning of the ball to show the spectators exactly where the ball relative to the line to win is.
If that sounds familiar, it is because Sony Hawk-Eye is the same technology used in tennis. The US Open uses Sony Hawk-Eye to measure if a ball was out of the limits, and recreational the action in an animatic chart so that the spectators see it.
A preseason game between the Detroit Lions and the New York giants were completely deployed from Hawk-Eye to determine if he had won a first attempt. Although Hawk-Eye was able to generate the image that shows that the ball was really short, the critics indicated that it took time.
“Are we going to use it if it has been so long?” The preseason analyst of the giants, Phil Simms, asked in the transmission.
There is also the nostalgia factor with the chain gang, which some players are not willing to put aside.
“It’s part of the game,” said the closed wing of the Kansas City Chiefs, Travis Kelce, on the “New Heights” podcast.
Line technology to win, was not used in the regular season and is not used for the current postseason, the next preseason will be tested again.
“We need to have the right results,” said Amendolia, “and when we do it, we will climb up and if it.”