Technology stopped working in the NFL and it was carnage

3291 days ago

Microsoft and their tablet, the Surface have a very high profile partnership with the American Football league, the NFL.

But during the Monday Night Football game between Dallas and Washington in the US capital, things went a little wrong for the visitors from Texas.

The communication link to their bank of tablets stopped working, meaning that players and coaching staff were unable to access playbooks, as well as tactical information crucial to helping them win the game.

For those new to the sport, American football can be pretty complicated, with each team having Yellow Pages-sized playbooks of the various offensive and defensive plays they use. Introducing dozens of Surfaces to the sidelines makes that whole process easier and more digestible.

But if technology fails, surely they could just fall back on good old fashioned print outs, right?

Wrong. The printer pitch-side broke too.

And just to top it all off, the rules state that if one team has technical issues, the other team can’t use them either, so even Washington’s tablets were working fine, they had to ditch them.

Naturally, Twitter found this entire episode quite amusing.

But, given how some players in the NFL have been known to treat the tablets in the past, it’s not too surprising to see them break down. We’re looking at you, Aaron Rodgers.

Incidentally, the Cowboys won the tech-free game 19-16.