Amid the chaos during NFL games, coaches aim to maintain calm inside the headset

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Amid the chaos on the sideline and the frenzy within the stadium, there must be calm inside a coach’s headset during NFL games.

It’s a loud, intense, pressurized environment where communication is essential.

Quarterbacks need to hear the plays that are called into their helmet speaker through a one-way radio in order to relay it to the rest of the offense.

Try saying this with 85,000 fans screaming at you: “Green left twin nasty z peel tight pass 37 buster bluff x post y bite.”

Likewise, a designated defensive player has to get the call and provide it to his teammates in the huddle.

Coordinators talk with other assistants on the sideline, position coaches discuss strategy with players and the head coach can hear all the nearby chatter while having various conversations on his headset. Some head coaches who call offensive or defensive plays directly communicate with the quarterback or defensive signal-caller so they have even more responsibilities.

Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur flips between five channels on his headset. He talks with quarterback Jordan Love, offensive coordinator Adam Stenavich, defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley, special teams coordinator Rich Bisaccia and game manager Connor Lewis.

“There’s definitely got to be some calm on the headset in regards to you talking,” LaFleur told The Associated Press. “The communication between me and Jordan is absolutely critical since I’m the primary play-caller.”

In the heat of the moment, it’s easy to flip to the wrong channel.

“You’ve got to be on it,” LaFleur said. “If you hit the wrong button, you might be talking to the wrong person. So part of it is as a user, you better know what you’re doing.”

Teams always prepare for crowd noise, technological malfunctions or anything else that can impact communication.

Two-time NFL Coach of the Year Ron Rivera didn’t call plays during his 13-year coaching career with Carolina and Washington. He focused on maintaining a calm atmosphere on the sideline.

“I listened to everybody for the most part,” Rivera told the AP. “I really did, and I always tried to keep the chaos down. If I heard something that I thought was heading in the wrong direction, I would get people to stop and just silence everybody and say, ‘OK, let the coordinator speak.’

“It’s an emotional game. Anytime you’re competing at a high level and trying to be successful, sometimes attitudes flare, tempers flare. And the one thing that I always tried to make everybody understand is that if you look like you’re out of control, people are going to respond in a negative fashion. But if you looked like you’ve got it under control, if your body language is what it needs to be, because people react to what’s being said, but if you control it, everybody thinks, ‘OK, we’re fine.'"

Baker Mayfield has led the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to three straight game-winning scores in the final two minutes. He has a new voice in his ear this season. Offensive coordinator Josh Grizzard replaced Liam Coen, who went to Jacksonville.

Right from the start, the communication between Mayfield and Grizzard has been excellent.

“In the high-stress, two-minute situations, he’s calm because we know that when you’re going fast, up-tempo, defenses can only get so many calls out there,” Mayfield said. “So, he knows to call certain things and he trusts us to be able to go out there and execute, and our guys are good at it.”

A calm head is important, so is technology.

The NFL has come a long way from that standpoint. The league introduced virtual measurements this season, using technology for virtual line-to-gain measurements.

Making sure teams have the best equipment to communicate is a priority. Remember when teams would complain about communication issues when they faced New England on the road during Bill Belichick’s time as coach? There was even a league investigation in 2015 and the Patriots were cleared of wrongdoing in that one.

The NFL partnered with Sony last year to custom-develop a headset that meets the needs of coaches. It’s tailored and tuned specifically for the sideline, relying on the same noise-canceling engineering in the 1000X series.

The headset was tested using real crowd noises in excess of 100 decibels to optimize the noise-canceling algorithm for in-stadium accuracy. It also features a custom-built microphone engineered specifically to isolate and elevate the coach’s voice, ensuring consistent and clear communication on the field.

The new headset debuted at the Hall of Fame game and is being used by every coach on all 32 teams.

Sometimes, frustrated coaches slam their headsets to the ground. Sony built the new headset to ensure it could withstand contact, putting it through extensive drop-testing.

To endure it could handle intense weather conditions, developers put it through freezer-like facilities to simulate extreme cold and shower tests to replicate heavy rain.

“We’ve taken a coach-first approach, listening, testing and engineering to make sure we can accommodate the many unique demands of the sport,” said Neal Manowitz, president and COO of Sony Electronics.

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AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl