The NFL's headset communication system, and how defenses are using it to baffle young QBs

But all of this stems from an interesting story that dropped on Tuesday where Steelers linebacker Alandon Roberts told the media that The Steelers noticed that New Orleans quarterback Tyler Shuck was not making his own checks at the line of scrimmage in their game last Sunday in Paris, which the Steelers won 16-10.

That head coach Kellen Moore was making all of those checks and he was doing it in the time allotted him through the quarterback headset communication system.

So for those who aren't exactly sure how all that works, in the NFL, They have technology that allows a coordinator, a coach, a play caller, whomever, to communicate directly into the headset or into the helmet, I should say, of the quarterback who's got a headset implanted in there.

And he can tell them to play.

From the time the play clock starts at 40 seconds until there's 14 seconds left, he can feed whatever information that he wants into the ear of his quarterback.

Now it seems like 20 or 26 seconds.

That's a lot of time, but you have to understand the moment a previous play ends, the moment the whistle blows to kill a previous play, the play clock starts on the new play.

So the first six or seven seconds of that new play clock, you're just gathering information.

What's the down and distance? Where's the ball on the field? Are we on the hash? Are we in the middle? What's our situation? At that point, you now have to decide on a play, which includes most of the time changing a personnel group.

You got to feed that play into the headset of the quarterback.

He's got to now call it in the huddle.

And now when he breaks the huddle and you begin to see how the defense lines up, you may only have a few seconds to be able to look at what the defense is doing and relay information to your quarterback.

But those few seconds are really valuable for certain coaches in being able to provide as much information as they can.

And then with 14 seconds left, it shuts off.

And we'll talk about in a minute, what kind of information are they providing? So the Steelers noticed this, right? That all the checks were being done through the headset.

Nothing was being done organically at the line of scrimmage.

And so what the Steelers did was they just kind of stayed in a very static defensive look until there were about 15 seconds left on the play clock, at which point the headset shut off and now Tyler Shuck was on his own.

Whatever information Kellen Moore had given him He now had to use because he wasn't making checks on his own.

And so the information Moore gave him was in many results or many ways, I should say, linked to the look that he was seeing from the Steelers, right? The Steelers are in their base defense and it's a too high shell.

And so let's look for this.

We want to get into this check.

Here's our cover two beaters.

Here's our key defender, whatever it might be that Moore is feeding him.

And now all of a sudden the play clock hits 14 and the Steelers change the look.

I mean, in many ways, this is not new.