FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — Terry Fontenot was skipping an Atlanta Falcons OTA practice in Cooperstown, N.Y., in June when he got a surprise in his hotel room. The Falcons general manager had spent the day watching his son, Kaiden, play in the Cooperstown All-Star Village baseball tournament. That night, he sat down at his computer to watch film of the Falcons’ on-field session he’d missed at home.
“I’m watching practice and you have different views, the sideline, the end zone, then a higher end zone view and another view all the way to the line of scrimmage,” Fontenot explained. “So I’m clicking through the views and all of a sudden I hear something. I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then all of a sudden I’m in the huddle.”
Fontenot then heard and saw footage from cameras the Falcons had attached to the helmets of quarterbacks Kirk Cousins and Michael Penix Jr. during practice sessions this offseason.
“I knew we had talked about the possibility, but all of a sudden it’s just in our regular film,” Fontenot said.
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Atlanta’s coaching staff gained valuable insights from the footage, coach Raheem Morris said. In return, the coaches had to listen to a series of playful complaints from the players.
“I joke with them that it’s kind of like the KGB: ‘You listen to everything I say,'” Cousins said. “The huddle used to be my time, but now you’re sitting there and the huddle is bugged. I tell my teammates, ‘You’re not getting away with this.’ When you say, ‘What’s the point of this?’ the whole building knows. It’s probably more of an espionage technique than anything, but feedback is feedback and it’s another tool.”
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Penix, a rookie, said he benefits from being able to hear Cousins, a 13-year veteran, announce plays and manage the huddle and snap cadence, but he hates the sound of his own voice.
“I feel like my voice sounds different in real life, but other than that I like the look of it,” he said. “It’s cool.”
Matthew Bergeron, a 6-foot-1, 300-pound offensive lineman, doesn’t have to worry about his voice being heard in the huddle, but he’s not sure the camera is giving him the most flattering angle.
“I think I looked weird when I was watching film,” he said. “I looked a lot bigger than I thought. It’s not my best angle, but it’s a good angle to watch film.”
Penix also believes that the camera does not appreciate his intelligence enough.
“Sometimes on the GoPro you can’t really see what I’m reading,” the quarterback said. “Nine times out of 10, I’m looking at a defender. So my GoPro might be this way, but I’m actually reading that way.”
(The “GoPro” camera isn’t actually a GoPro. It’s a DJI Action 2 model.)
The Falcons coaching staff tries to determine what the quarterbacks are looking at with the footage and thus how they read the defense and go through their passing progressions, but the most valuable aspect is the audio, said first-year offensive coordinator Zac Robinson.
“The biggest tool is hearing the communication and how the guys are coming in and out of the huddle,” Robinson said. “I know it’s important for Mike as a young guy to learn how it’s supposed to sound.”
When Fontenot heard the helmet camera suggestion, he assumed the idea had originated with Robinson, who succeeded Morris on the Los Angeles Rams coaching staff. In fact, the man behind the cameras is Jake Stroot, the Falcons’ fourth-year video director.
Stroot got the idea after seeing the Miami Dolphins using the cameras during joint training sessions in Miami in 2023. He presented them to the Falcons coaching staff and Morris liked the idea.
“You can see exactly where the quarterbacks are looking when they’re barking through cadences,” Morris said. “You judge your coaches there, too. You can see the flow between Zac Robinson and Kirk.”
The cameras each hold 30 minutes of footage, and Stroot’s staff has four for each quarterback, rotating them several times during practice using magnetic mounts. The cameras roll during the team’s 11-on-11 practice sessions.
“We tried it in the spring, and they liked it, and it’s grown ever since,” Stroot said. “The audio part is really special just hearing the cadence and stuff. All the guys are really into it.”
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Reviewing the helmet cam footage and cutting it into clips for the coaching staff is “the best part of my day,” Stroot said.
“The passion that Kirk shows is still there, and you can hear it when you hear him talk,” Stroot said.
The helmet cameras have added four hours of footage for Stroot and his staff to work with each day. The video staff was already recording practice with nine aerial cameras and six ground cameras each day, collecting nearly 20 hours of footage from each practice, all of which is cut into clips and made available to the coaching staff within 30 minutes of practice.
The Falcons also added sideline video screens during practice that show the previous play in real time, allowing players and coaches to quickly review the play between snaps. Stroot was also responsible for installing and operating the screens.
“That’s just the mentality of him and his entire department,” Fontenot said. “When there’s a new person in the video department, the first thing he says is, ‘Our mantra is there’s no such thing as no. We don’t say no.’ Someone comes down and asks for something, the first answer is yes and they’ll figure it out.”
The Falcons hired Stroot away from the University of Georgia in 2021 after asking Bulldogs coach Kirby Smart for permission to talk to him.
“We interviewed him, he’s doing great, and when I called Kirby to say we were hiring him, there was a curse word,” Fontenot said. “He said, ‘I’m so happy for him, but man, this is a tough loss.’ Once Jake gets in the building, you’ll see why.”
The Falcons and Dolphins are believed to be the only NFL teams currently using helmet cameras. According to Stroot, no other professional teams have asked him for advice on implementing them, although several colleges have.
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Defensive coordinator Jimmy Lake thought the cameras were a tool of the Falcons’ social media team when he saw them popping up on the practice field.
“But then Rah showed it in the team meeting, and that was really cool,” Lake said. “I thought, ‘Maybe I want to do one of those on Jessie Bates, so we can turn it around as a teaching tool.’ I think it’s genius.”
Bates said he might watch the footage to see what he looks like from a quarterback’s perspective.
“It’s cool to see,” the safety said. “Rah gets it up sometimes in the team meeting room, and to see how Kirk processes things and how excited he gets to this day is cool. He talks a little s— too. I’m definitely going to have to get some footage of that.”
In addition to reviewing his performances for each play, Cousins also uses the film to explore his own trove of comedic material for “dad jokes.”
“I’m getting a better sense of how I come across,” the 36-year-old quarterback said. “I’ll tell a joke that I thought was really funny, and then I’ll listen to it and say, ‘Don’t say that.’ I’ll look at it and think, ‘I thought I was cool, but I’m a nerd.'”
(Photo of Kirk Cousins: Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)
