During the preseason, the NFL experimented with a high-tech system for measuring first downs. But that system will be shelved in favor of the old-fashioned chains during the regular season.
The NFL will not use the Hawk-Eye computer vision system in the regular season this year but could try it in 2025, according to Mark Maske of the Washington Post.
Although Hawk-Eye has been a tremendous innovation in tennis, where it is used to determine whether a ball was in or out of bounds, it didn’t work as well during the preseason for spotting first downs. It was most notable for delaying the Lions-Giants preseason game when the high-tech system took much longer than the traditional chains to measure on a play that wasn’t even close to a first down.
In tennis, it’s easy for Hawk-Eye to employ camera angles that give an unobscured view of the ball relative to the line. In football, it’s much harder: Sometimes players are blocking the cameras’ view of the ball. Sometimes there’s a clear view of the ball but not of whether or not the ball carrier’s knee was down before the ball crossed the line to gain. Unlike in tennis, the line to gain isn’t actually on the field, so it’s not always clear at what point the ball crossed the line.
The technology may well work in the NFL some day. But that day will not be in 2024.