Seahawks swap playbooks for tablets

For professional football players, the playbook is the Bible. Hundreds of pages detailing every offensive and defensive set. But for the Seahawks, that Bible is now a tablet computer.

“It’s very easy to get on and just flick the pages and everybody’s so used to using electronics these days. It’s just another way to get to the playbook and it’s faster and better,” says Seahawks safety Kam Chancellor in a report on Seahawks.com.

The coaches and support staff love them. Video director Brad Campbell says they’ve cut down on four to five hours of work every week stuffing the books with copies of new plays.

“I mean, they used to manually stuff thousands of pieces of paper in every book and hand them out.”

Campbell says the staff shoots video of every practice, converts the relevant information to a PDF and then uploads everything to a tablet in a fraction of the time. They can easily mix video and printed images.

“The playbook automatically downloads to them wherever they are, so if there’s a change it brings in the entire playbook,” Campbell says. “And they’re in their meetings and they all have them open and they’re going through the playbook at that point.”

Campbell says the new technology also allows the team to upload game video for players to review soon after they leave the locker room, so they can get an instant critique.

“It’s all fresh. So as soon as I get on an airplane, we’re handing them a copy of the game and they’re watching the game before they even get a drink,” Campbell says.

Not everyone is fully sold on the idea. Quarterback Russell Wilson says while he likes his tablet, he’s “kind of old school” and still takes notes by hand in a separate notebook.

But head coach Pete Carroll is a big fan of the new technology.

“Our ability to adjust and update stuff on a daily basis has been fantastic. The graphics are so good. I think what’s going on with technology, it’s nice to get out of those books,” he says.

The tablets also helps eliminate a big threat: espionage. If one is lost or stolen, they can be remotely wiped so no one else can access the valuable data.

“Every aspect of it has been great,” says Carroll.