GLENDALE, Ariz. -- Early in the third quarter of the Arizona Cardinals' first preseason game, running back Stepfan Taylor ran for a 5-yard-touchdown but it was nullified by an offensive-holding penalty on tight end Troy Niklas.
Coach Bruce Arians, however, disagreed, and he set out to prove the officials wrong.
Arians took advantage of the NFL’s experiment that allows home teams to watch game film on tablets from the sideline once during the preseason. He pulled up the play and noticed a hold didn’t occur.
So, he did what any rational coach would do.
“I showed it to him,” Arians said. “I said, ‘This would be your worst nightmare if I had this on the sideline.’”
The official didn’t look, Arians said.
Arians hopes the tablets don’t become a permanent fixture on the sidelines because they help “bad coaches.” It’s a technology that Arians believes will put coaches who don’t prepare as well as others on equal footing. The same video shot by the teams high above the field that produce the still photos quarterbacks use in between series have been fed into the tablets, allowing coaches to basically watch game film in real time.
“You spend six hours a day on a blitz on Tuesday and he can watch it,” Arians said. “He (usually) doesn’t get to watch that until Monday.”
Having access to tablets on the sideline will help offensive coordinators more than defensive coaches, Arians said.
“Offensively, you don’t run the same plays very often,” he said. “But defensively, you spend a lot of hours and time on a blitz that a guy can sit there and watch it on tape and show his guys and fix it in the first quarter.
“That’s not what it’s all about.”
