NFL Health & Safety: Data sensor technology provides insights, better care for players

The health and safety of NFL athletes is always at the forefront of the league.

This has been seen in recent changes to the kickoff rule and in how players ramp up at the beginning of the preseason to avoid lower-extremity injuries.

Those decisions have all been spurred by the league's commitment to data collection and data-driven adjustments, something the latest player health and safety feature released on Tuesday dives deep on.

"We have access to vastly more information than we had before," Jeff Miller, the NFL's executive vice president, explains in the video. "The insights that we can glean from it as it relates to rules changes, practices habits, equipment that can lead to more players available, more opportunities for players to do their best on field, which is a win for everybody."

One of the keys to capitalizing on the widening range of information is to look past simply analyzing one team's data, and instead aggregate league data seen across all 32 clubs, something NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills believes gets "answers much more quickly for everyone."

Accompanying the growth in technology, there's also been a growth in the mindset of coaches on using every nugget of information available to better grasp player physicality beyond the Xs and Os.

"In the recent years, there's been a pretty big paradigm shift within the NFL," Tyler Williams, Vikings vice president of player health and performance, explains. "Coaches want to understand and know more information about their athletes than ever before. And technology provides that pathway, that avenue to give them that information."

Technology like data sensors, the star in this player heath and safety feature, is being implemented in multiple ways.

For instance, RFID