With 11 cameras circling the practice fields at the NovaCare Complex, Patrick Dolan's team has every move the Eagles make captured, recorded, and ready for review. And thanks to a new oversized video screen that measures 7 feet by 12 feet, coaches, and players can instantly access replays of the previous snap seconds after it happens.
Technology sure is wonderful and Dolan, the team's vice president of football technology, is providing it for the Eagles.
"Players and coaches can see it right away and they can make immediate corrections," said Dolan, who joined the Eagles in 2013. "The big board is like the video screens at Lincoln Financial Field, where guys can look up and get immediate feedback. It's new for us. We've been about the tablets – we were the first team to use the tablets at practice in 2014 – and there have been other teams using the boards, so we're augmenting."
Dolan and his team are busy around the clock for the Eagles as one of the key groups keeping the operation running smoothly. In addition to making sure that they have practice time and the actual games filmed and then cut up and delivered to the coaching staff, the football technology team – known as the video crew in simpler times – has a lot on its plate, including making sure the meeting rooms are functioning smoothly, working with the coaching staff to have its plan covered, and completing the audio technology for the practice sound system. Every play is shot. Every individual period has two cameras.
Dolan has seven full-time people working with him, along with one intern, and even scouts pitch in and shoot video with hand-held or Pole-cam cameras.
"One of the things that has been really cool is that the entire team buys in," said Dolan, who has more than 30 seasons of experience in the field and who has been with the Eagles since 2013. "It is a complex operation and it requires our entire team to make it work. The men and women with me, they are outstanding, they are valued, and there is no way we can accomplish what we accomplish without everyone playing a huge part in the process."
As much as any part of the football business, video technology has accelerated and is not even recognizable from when Dolan began his career as a graduate assistant at the University of Pittsburgh. Back then, he was working with 16-millimeter film and hot-splicing pieces of film together – that is how the term "cutup" started – to what it is now – all digital, all rapid, and incredibly precise.
During Training Camp, the Eagles have had an on-field practice in the morning and a walkthrough practice in the afternoon. Dolan's team will shoot the walkthrough with five to seven cameras and then there is the team meeting in the late afternoon. It never ends, not until well after practice is over, and then it begins early the next morning all over again.
"We want to be efficient and we don't want to have a meeting interrupted because of something glitching," said Dolan, who previously worked 10 seasons for the Steelers and then built the Browns' video department from scratch in 1998. "This is year number 37 for me and every day is something new. I get my workouts in every day at some point – getting in a walk or the bike – because I'm up at 5:45 every morning.
"But I love this. I love the practices and the gameday experiences are second to none. We're part of a team and our mission is to win. This is not a 9-to-5 job – it's more like 7-to-8 – and if you don't have the passion, this is not the role for you. If you would have told the 12-year-old Pat Dolan that I was going to work for 37 years in the NFL, I would have signed up right then. With the people I'm with, the staff here that is so great to work with, and an organization that is committed to winning, it is just amazing to walk into this building every day and get to work and do my part to help the Philadelphia Eagles win. That is what is all about for me and, really, for all of us. That is what we are here doing every day."
