📡 They Put 5G and AR in Football Helmets

You’ll need your tinfoil hats today because we have conspiracy theories and 5G stories on tap today!

Here’s what to expect:

🗞 The Big Story: 5G Football Helmets

📉 Biggest Loser: NFL’s Conspiracy Theory

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Who is Dov Kleiman?

⬇️ Listen: We drafted the best MLB expansion cities and I won…

🗞 The Big Story

Gallaudet University invented the modern-day huddle, and they’re about to change football again.

Background: Gallaudet University is a Division 3 school in Washington D.C. that caters to deaf and hearing impaired students.

In 1894, the school’s football team is said to have invented the huddle as we know it today. The Bison originally used the tight, circular formation as a way to conceal the quarterback communicating the plays with his team via sign language.

But it eventually caught on with everyone else.

The Dilemma: While technology today allows for coaches to communicate with their quarterbacks on the field via a headset in the helmet, the team at Gallaudet still has to sign the plays to each other - often from across the field.

The Solution: AT&T and Gallaudet University partnered together to create the first-ever 5G augmented reality helmet. Here’s how it works:

• The coach selects a play via a tablet on the sideline

• The play is transmitted to the player’s helmet via 5G

• The play is displayed on an augmented reality screen in the player’s visor

The Implications: What first comes to mind for me is the adoption of this helmet outside of Gallaudet University and the cost of the tech.

If this were to ever make it to the NFL, it would almost entirely eliminate the effect crowd noise has on a game.

And while I’m sure AT&T donated this first batch of helmets to the school, I can imagine they cost over $1,000 each to make.

📉 Biggest Loser

The NFL scriptwriters must be in their conspiracy theory era because we had a good one last week.

Setting the Scene: During last week’s Thursday Night Football game between the Bears and the Commanders, fans noticed a man with a Commanders phone case suspiciously standing behind Bears offensive coordinator Luke Getsy.

Phone-Gate: Fans immediately concluded that this was a Washington Commander’s spy who was taking pictures of their opponent’s plays.

But I uncovered the real story.

The Man with the Phone: The NFL identified him as Ravin Caldwell, a former player in Washington from 1987 to 1992.

Now, it is true that he was taking pictures, but only because it’s his job.

• The NFL hires former players as uniform inspectors and places two at every game, one on each sideline.

• Their job is to take photos during the game and upload them in the NFL’s system so the league can hand out uniform fines every week.

Getsy’s Fault: It’s also worth noting that Luke Getsy was standing near the 20-yard line when the broadcast cut to him, which is well outside of the team’s bench area.

Therefore, it’s very common to see members of the media and league employees standing in the background.

To the Deniers: Even if you don’t believe all that, just think about it logically for a second:

Wouldn’t the Commanders want to steal plays from a team that’s actually good?

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💰 Pick of the Week

Sleeper has Ja’Marr Chase’s receiving yards discounted to just 72.5 this week.

Based on last week’s 192-yard performance, I’m hammering the more on this but just in case you need more convincing consider this:

In 2022, Chase went under 72.5 yards just 4 times in 12 regular season games.

Now, to be fair he’s already done it twice this year but if you believe at all in the law of averages you’d consider taking him to get more than 72.5 yards this Sunday!

And if you use my code TYLERWEBB right now on Sleeper, you get matched up to $100 on your first deposit!

🏆 Winner’s Circle

You don’t have to be a real reporter to gain a following tweeting NFL news anymore. Case and point?

Dov Kleiman

NFL Fans Know: If you watch football and have been on Twitter at all in the past year, you’ve seen a Dov Kleiman post, but is this guy actually real?

His avatar is an illustration, his handle (@NFL_DovKleiman) seems to indicate he’s an NFL reporter but he doesn’t actually break any news, and no one has ever seen any pictures of this guy…

Until now.

What Does He Do?: Dov is a part of this new crop of accounts on Twitter that just aggregates news from actual reporters. It basically goes like this:

• Adam Schefter tweets out breaking news

• Dov (and others) copy and paste the tweet and repost it on their accounts

To be fair, they’ll include something like “per @AdamSchefter” at the end but the real problem comes when they tweet things out of context.

Rodgers-Mania: A great example of this happened earlier this year when Schefter went on ESPN and presented the following as an opinion (paraphrasing):

“The Green Bay Packers probably won’t trade Aaron Rodgers within the NFC but they’ll explore options in the AFC.”

Sure, this was probably based on things Schefter had heard but it wasn’t news, just conjecture.

But presented out of context by Dov Kleiman, it looked like a breaking report:

And he posts this type of stuff upwards of 60 times per day.

The Man Behind the Curtain: In an interview he did with the New York Post, Dov confirms that he makes money running the account but isn’t doing it for fame.

The Post also received a few images of Dov, confirming he’s very real and that he’s in his 30s, living in Israel.

⏱ In Other News

• College athletes attempt to unionize.

• Jahmyr Gibbs fantasy owners are seething.

• How did I miss this Twitter exchange?

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👋 Dov, if you’re reading this; I’d like to interview you. We need to set the record straight. DM me.

Everyone else: Happy Friday!