NFL fans, for the most part, seemed mostly unaware that all footballs are strapped with a tracking chip. They also seemed more surprised that the league isn’t actually putting it to proper use.
As it turns out, all of the balls used in games have a chip inside which can be used to monitor their location. Fans weren’t aware of this until NFL’s Next Gen Stats Twitter account posted a tweet explaining how close the Baltimore Ravens Tyler Huntley got to scoring a touchdown with his QB sneak against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday night.
The account noted the ball was one-sixth of a yard away from the end zone on the attempt.
Needless to say, Twitter was flabbergasted.
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To be fair, though, while the chip can be used to track the location of the ball, there’s still no way to do so relative to the location of the body parts of pertinent players.
Sportico’s Jacob Feldman has also pointed out that the chips used in balls are only accurate up to six inches, which is one of the reasons they aren’t used to do more.
