Forget Big Ben and Bell, the Steelers' new MVP is a robot
Pittsburgh is using robots during minicamp as a way to do drills with minimal contact
By
Jared Dubin
•
1 min read
Who's the MVP of the Pittsburgh Steelers? Is it Ben Roethlisberger? What about Le'Veon Bell? Or Antonio Brown? They're all acceptable answers. They're also all incorrect. The Steelers have a new MVP -- Mobile Virtual Player.
Check it out:
Experimenting with a new technology has us thinking differently when we hear "MVP."
— Pittsburgh Steelers (@steelers) May 19, 2016
🎥 | https://t.co/hAsTxd8xFxhttps://t.co/4RXpKN3r1S
The idea came from Dartmouth football coach Buddy Teevins, who dreamed it up after banning tackling during practice due to injuries.
"We were tasked with how can we practice tackling without utilizing another player," said Elliot Kastner, a former defensive tackle for Dartmouth who is the co-founder/director of research and development for MVP, per the Steelers' official web site. "What it comes down to is repetitive impact on players is what we are trying to eliminate. We realized the safest thing to do is pull one of those players out of the drill. It was introduced to reduce player on player contact."
Kastner's team eventually made the robots so that they're not only able to cut, weave, stop and start, but also be tackled, so players didn't miss out on the all-important tackling drills they might have been doing otherwise.
"It's an awesome piece of football technology," head coach Mike Tomlin said of the MVP. "I am always interested in ways to utilize technology in terms of teaching football. We are excited to get a close look at it. The applications we are quickly finding are endless. It never gets tired. It runs at an appropriate football speed. All of the position groups are getting an opportunity to use it.
"It's funny, you just put it on the field and watch the guys and they show you the applications. It's been fun watching that."
