SmashMouth

Imagine a room where a quarterback could slip on a headset and immediately be immersed within a play. He could go through all his reads, fire off a pass, and avoid pass rushers, all without getting out of his chair.

He could stand firm under a J.J. Watt pass rush without ever absorbing a hit, or connect with Brandin Cooks over the middle even though Cooks is actually miles away.

“What? No,” Saints rookie quarterback Garrett Grayson said between laughs. “I’ve never heard of that or done that.”

The concept sounds like something dreamed up by a Hollywood screenwriter with an overactive imagination. But virtual reality is real, and it’s something teams across the country are starting to employ.

The technology, developed by StriVR Labs, is currently being used by the Dallas Cowboys, and college programs such as Stanford, Auburn, Arkansas, Clemson, Vanderbilt and Dartmouth are now using it.



“The nice thing is I can go in there and watch 12 plays of seven-on-seven and do it in 15 minutes and it’s like I got 12 reps,” Cowboys quarterback Brandon Weeden recently told ESPN. “And I can rewind them as much as I want. I can look out there and watch the other quarterbacks, the receivers, the cornerbacks. It’s like you’re watching tape, but you can learn from it.”

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