The NFL is a copycat league, and during mandatory mini camp the Pittsburgh Steelers are doing the copying. During OTAs Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was noted to be wearing a camera on his helmet during practice, and apparently the Steelers now have their quarterback, Kenny Pickett, doing the same.
Pittsburgh quarterbacks coach Mike Sullivan, while meeting with the media today, detailed the reasoning for having Pickett wear a camera during practice.
“That’s something we just actually put on the past few days,” Sullivan said via video that was posted to Steelers.com about the helmet camera. “[We’re] just always looking at any type of edge, any type of advantage. This is the time of year to do that, it’s the time of the year to improve, to lay the foundation, to really set the stage for where we want to go. And that’s just an extra tool that we’re still fine tuning, trying to get a sense of, because what it does is it gives a vision of how he sees it. It’s not perfect. I mean, it’s not like having an iPhone back there, but it does give a perspective so that from a pre-snap standpoint gives us a chance to say, ‘Okay, hey, you were looking here? What did you see? What were the tells by the alignment of the linebackers or where this player was?'”
While the All-22 and other practice film gives a lot to help out a quarterback and see how a play develops, a camera on the quarterback’s helmet will do the best in helping see what he sees on a play and before a play. There are a lot of different factors on what a quarterback sees and why that is. When pairing the QB cam with the All-22 the coaching staff can get a great idea of how Pickett goes through his progressions and how he is identifying coverages.
Sullivan later said that the idea came from the Steelers IT staff, which likely heard or saw that the Dolphins used it with Tagovailoa during OTAs. Given that training camp hasn’t started yet, now is the time to test new things out that could help, and it is hard to imagine how this won’t help out the Steelers this year.
Pickett has to take a second year jump this year if the team wants to be a contender for a Super Bowl. While he clearly improved as the season went along last year, there is still a lot of room for improvement, and I think this new helmet camera will help.
It is well known that Pickett is a film junkie; he even has his own study room where he grinds out film study in the Steelers’ facility. Adding an extra type of film seems like it will only be beneficial and something that he can meet with Sullivan, offensive coordinator Matt Canada, and head coach Mike Tomlin to review. Pickett is still a young player and will still have learning curves to negotiate. Hopefully this will help him navigate them by possibly making it easier to fix some mistakes that pop up in practice.
