This story appears in the Sept. 9, 2019, issue of Sports Illustrated. For more great storytelling and in-depth analysis, subscribe to the magazine—and get up to 94% off the cover price. Click here for more.
It’s a weekday March morning in a Portland warehouse, a deep-post route from the Willamette’s waters, and JuJu Smith-Schuster is running around in a pair of specially sensorized, size-14 turf cleats, allowing a team of Adidas technicians to study the way his feet interact with the field turf when he sprints and changes direction. The technology is called Aramis, and because it is new and because the images it produces on the nearby monitor are both colorful and insightful, the 22-year-old Steelers receiver is interested in it.