I’m watching an NFL Films recap of a Giants / Cowboys game and they just showed a receiver make a short catch then run 60 yards down the sideline for a TD while chased by two defenders. I didn’t catch the receiver’s name, but he just walked away from the defense and seemed to have plenty of speed in reserve.
The close up on his face showed him looking up and slightly left during most of his sideline sprint and I couldn’t help but think he was watching himself on TV to see just how close the defense was so he could maybe run fast enough but not too fast, i.e. not waste energy that he’d need to run patterns for the rest of the game.
I don’t know what else he’d be looking at, but he was focused on whatever it was. Pretty cool use of technology if so. Any thoughts on this idea?
I think if I tried to watch myself run on TV in real time, I’d just get dizzy and fall over.
I’ve heard this is not uncommon, and that players who are breaking away will sometimes check the Jumbotron to see if anybody is gaining on them so they can either change direction or speed up. It’s pretty clever.
It’s an interesting tactic, but the scoreboard is not in sync with the action. I know in our stadium (where I work in the video booth) the display can be up to a few seconds behind the action on the field, depending on which camera we’re showing.
I’m waiting for the day someone looks up like that and then gets blind-sided by the defender who isn’t shown on camera.
I’ve seen it many times. I’ve seen one of the runners in question (pretty sure it was a 49ers receiver, but maybe Tim Brown) cover up the ball when he saw a closing DB go to swipe at the ball.
Makes you want to make sure your home stadium’s board switcher knows what different feeds to show when the two different teams have the ball.
Pretty sure the receiver the OP is talking about is Victor Cruz.
Tiki Barber waas famous for this, and in one interview he commented that he couldn’t do it in Dallas (their old stadium, of course) because the screen had a delay. He always did it at home, though.
Makes for an interesting scenario. The camera angles can distort perception of distance. You know how they have that camera angle that makes a 40 yard field goal look like a mile? It would be great if they would incorporate the message that is on the passenger side rear view mirror. Flash a message, “Hey Cruz, objects on the Jumbotron may be closer than they appear.”
Possible consequence of this: Jumbotron exhibits a variable delay that tends to be extremely small when the home team might need it, but possibly a second or so at important times when the visitors might want to use it. Plausible deniability is preserved by describing the variability as a “technical glitch”.
Sounds like the home team needs to throw in a CGI defender onto the screen to guide the opposing receiver towards the real ones.
Note: Because the screen is for the fans, would this be against any rules?
Larry Fitzgerald supposedly did the same when running in a TD in the 2009 Super Bowl.
Jumbotron use by athletes pops up in other sports as well. In Roger Huerta’s 2007 UFC fight with Alberto Crane, Huerta couldn’t see Crane clearly because he had his back and was directly behind him, but successfully used the Jumbotron to see where Crane was behind him and strike him, winning the fight in that round by TKO.