FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Terry Fontenot was playing hooky from an Atlanta Falcons OTA workout day in Cooperstown, N.Y., in June when he got a surprise in his hotel room. The Falcons’ general manager spent the day watching his son, Kaiden, play in the Cooperstown All-Star Village baseball tournament. That night, he sat down with his computer to review film of the Falcons’ on-field session he had missed back home.
“I’m watching practice, and you’ve got the different views, the sideline, the end zone, then a higher end zone view and another view right down the line of scrimmage,” Fontenot explained. “So I’m clicking through the views, and all of a sudden I hear something. I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ Then all of a sudden I’m in the huddle.”
Fontenot was hearing and then seeing the footage from cameras the Falcons have attached to the helmets of quarterbacks Kirk Cousins and Michael Penix Jr. for practice sessions this offseason.
“I knew we had talked about the possibility, but all of a sudden it’s just in our regular film,” Fontenot said.
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Atlanta’s coaching staff has gained valuable insight from the footage, coach Raheem Morris said. In exchange, the coaches have had to hear an array of playful complaints from the players.
“I joke with them that it’s kind of like the KGB: ‘You guys listen to everything I say,’” Cousins said. “The huddle used to be my time, but now you guys are in there and the huddle is bugged. I tell my teammates, ‘You guys are not getting let off the hook.’ If you say, ‘What’s the play here?’ the whole building knows. It’s probably more like a spy technique than anything else, but feedback is feedback, and it’s one more tool.”
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Penix, a rookie, said he has benefited from being able to hear how Cousins, a 13-year veteran, calls plays and manages the huddle and snap cadence, but he hates the sound of his own voice.
“I feel like my voice sounds different in person, but other than that, I like the view,” he said. “It’s a cool thing.”
Matthew Bergeron, a 6-foot-5, 323-pound offensive lineman, doesn’t have to worry about hearing his voice in the huddle, but he’s not sure the camera provides him the most flattering angle.
“I think it made me look weird when I watched film,” he said. “I looked a lot bigger than I thought I looked. It’s not my best angle, but it’s a good angle to watch film.”
Penix also doesn’t think the camera gives him proper credit for his canniness.
“Sometimes on the GoPro, you can’t really see what I’m reading,” the quarterback said. “Nine times out of 10, I am looking off a defender. So, my GoPro might be facing this way, but really I’m reading over there.”
(The “GoPro” camera isn’t actually a GoPro. It’s a DJI Action 2 model.)
The Falcons coaching staff tries to determine where the quarterbacks are looking with the footage, and thus how they are reading the defense and going through their passing progressions, but the most valuable aspect is the sound, first-year offensive coordinator Zac Robinson said.
“The biggest tool is hearing the communication and how the guys are getting in and out of the huddle,” Robinson said. “I know it’s big for Mike as a young guy just learning the process of what it’s supposed to sound like.”
When Fontenot heard the helmet camera suggestion, he assumed the idea started with Robinson, who followed Morris from the Los Angeles Rams’ coaching staff. Actually, the man behind the cameras is Jake Stroot, the Falcons’ fourth-year video director.
Stroot got the idea when he saw the Miami Dolphins using the cameras during joint practice sessions in Miami in 2023. He pitched them to the Falcons coaching staff, and Morris liked the idea.
“You can see exactly what the quarterbacks are looking at when they are barking through cadences,” Morris said. “You are grading your coaches there, too. You can see the flow between Zac Robinson and Kirk.”
The cameras hold 30 minutes of footage each, and Stroot’s staff has four for each quarterback, which they swap using magnetic holders multiple times each practice session. The cameras run throughout the team’s 11-on-11 practice work.
“We tried it out in the spring, and they liked it, and it has grown from there,” Stroot said. “The audio part is really special just to hear the cadence and stuff. All the guys are really digging it.”
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Watching the helmet camera footage and cutting it into clips for the coaching staff is “the most enjoyable part of my day,” Stroot said.
“The passion that Kirk shows is still very much there, and that’s very evident from hearing him talk,” Stroot said.
The helmet cameras have added four hours of footage for Stroot and his staff to work through every day. The video staff already was recording practice with nine aerial cameras and six ground cameras each day, accumulating nearly 20 hours of footage from each practice, all of which is cut into clips and made available to the coaching staff within 30 minutes of the end of practice.
The Falcons also have added sideline video screens during practice that show the previous play immediately so players and coaches can get quick reviews between snaps. Putting them in place and operating them also fell to Stroot.
“That’s just the mindset of him and his whole department,” Fontenot said. “If there’s a new person in the video department, the first thing he says is, ‘Our mantra is “no” doesn’t exist. We don’t say no.’ Somebody comes down and they ask for something, the first answer is yes and they figure it out.”
The Falcons hired Stroot away from the University of Georgia in 2021 after asking Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart for permission to talk to him.
“We interview him, it goes well, and when I called Kirby to tell him we were hiring him, there was an expletive,” Fontenot said. “He said, ‘I’m so happy for him, but man this is a tough loss.’ As soon as Jake is in the building, you see why.”
The Falcons and Dolphins are believed to be the only NFL teams currently using helmet cameras, and Stroot says no other professional teams have approached him for advice on implementation, though several colleges have.
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Defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake thought the cameras were a tool of the Falcons’ social media team when he saw them pop up on the practice field.
“But then Rah showed it in the team meeting, and it was really cool,” Lake said. “Got me thinking, ‘Maybe I want to put one of those on Jessie Bates so we can flip it the other way as a teaching tool.’ I think it’s genius.”
Bates said he might start reviewing the footage to see how he looks from a quarterback’s eyes.
“It’s cool to see,” the safety said. “Rah pulls it up in the team meeting room sometimes, and to see how Kirk processes things and how excited he gets to this day is cool. He talks a little s— as well. I need to start getting some footage of that, for sure.”
In addition to reviewing his performance for each play, Cousins uses the film to self-scout his wealth of “dad joke” comedy material.
“I get a better feel for how I come across,” the 36-year-old quarterback said. “I’ll say a joke I thought was pretty funny, and then I’ll go back and listen to it and say, ‘Don’t say that.’ I’ll watch it and think, ‘I thought I was cool, but I’m a nerd.’”
(Photo of Kirk Cousins: Todd Kirkland / Getty Images)
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5712468/2024/08/21/falcons-helmet-cameras-kirk-cousins/
