BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — The New Orleans Saints were the first team to go all-in on technology that is now sweeping across the NFL.
Zebra Technologies, the real-time player tracking system the Saints have been using for years, is now in the fourth year of a five-year contract with the NFL that uses Zebra to track every single player in the NFL on game day and produce statistics like the NFL's Next Gen Stats.
Football-wise, there are sweeping implications for teams that use the technology in practice. New Orleans was the first, and now roughly one-third of the NFL uses Zebra to collect player data during practices.