The Science of NFL Football: Vectors

One of the most spectacular plays in NFL football is when a quarterback

throws the ball right into the hands of his receiver with a pass so fast and
accurate, it's called "threading the needle".
It means putting a ball in a window that is so tight that only, you know, only
that football could-- could fit through there
The speed and direction the football needs to reach a receiver is a great
example of what's known in math and science as a "vector" - because it has
both a length and a direction. In this case, it's a velocity vector.
The quarterback has under his control how hard he throws the ball or with
what speed and in what direction.
To understand the role velocity vectors play in an NFL pass, we filmed former
NFL quarterback Joey Harrington, who played for the Detroit Lions and most
recently with the New Orleans Saints, using a special high-speed camera
called a Phantom Cam.
On the receiving end is Antonio Freeman, former wide receiver with the Green
Bay Packers.
The moment the football leaves Harrington's hand, it has velocity - both a
direction and a speed. On average, an NFL quarterback can throw between
45 to 50 miles per hour. It's possible to represent the ball's velocity vector
with an arrow.
While this vector is easy to draw for a pass from a stationary quarterback,
rarely does a quarterback have the luxury of just standing and throwing.
Oftentimes, he gets flushed out of the pocket, creating a whole a new vector his own velocity vector.
The target is where he wants the ball to go, so he has to understand that if
he's running, he's going to throw the ball in another direction.

It's possible to add these two vectors together to find a third vector - the
actual velocity the ball needs to reach the receiver. This vector can be found
using the so-called "parallelogram method" for adding vectors.

We take our two vectors, and we form a parallelogram, which is a four-sided

object, with opposite sides parallel.
Using the parallelogram's geometry, the vector sum is determined.
So, we take our parallelogram, and the sum of these two vectors is simply the
diagonal of the parallelogram.

Which makes it all the more important that the receiver is at the right place
at just the right time to receive the pass.
So you as a receiver have to know what your job is, where you're supposed
to be on a football field, to have the ball thrown to you, you never know how
fast a defense is going to react to which receiver and which one is going to be
open. So you have to run each route, as if you're getting the ball.
Making the quarterback's skills all the more impressive. In a real game, he
must calculate all of these vectors in a split second: the vector of his rollout,
the vector of the receiver, and the vector the ball must fly to reach its target.
It's a really good feeling when you put that ball exactly where it needs to be
And for an NFL quarterback, that means safely in the hands of his receiver.

What Are Vectors, and How Are They Used?

Vectors are used in science to describe anything that has both a direction and
a magnitude. They are usually drawn as pointed arrows, the length of which
represents the vector's magnitude. A quarterback's pass is a good example,
because it has a direction (usually somewhere downfield) and a magnitude
(how hard the ball is thrown).
Off the field, vectors can be used to represent any number of physical objects
or phenomena. Wind, for instance, is a vectorial quantity, because at any
given location it has a direction (such as northeast) and a magnitude (say, 45
kilometers per hour). You could make a map of airflow at any point in time,
then, by drawing wind vectors for a number of different geographic locations.

Many properties of moving objects are also vectors. Take, for instance, a
billiard ball rolling across a table. The ball's velocity vector describes its
movementthe direction of the vector arrow marks the ball's direction of
motion, and the length of the vector represents the speed of the ball.

The billiard ball's momentum is also a vectorial quantity, because momentum

is equal to mass times velocity. Therefore, the ball's momentum vector points
in the same direction as its velocity vector, and the momentum vector's
magnitude, or length, is the multiplication product of the ball's speed and its
mass.

Momentum vectors are useful when you want to predict what will happen
when two objects come into contact. Recall from the video that vectors can
be added together by joining them to make a shape called a parallelogram
and finding the diagonal of that parallelogram. The diagonal is the sum of the
two vectors that form the sides of the parallelogram.

Let's say that a rolling billiard ball is moving toward a glancing collision with a
stationary billiard ball. On impact, the moving ball transfers some of its
momentum to the stationary ball, and both roll away from the collision in
different directions. Following the impact, both balls have velocity and hence
momentum. In fact, the sum of the momentum vectors of the two balls after
the collision is equal to the first ball's momentum vector before the collision,
ignoring small losses due to friction as well as sound and heat energy

produced during the impact.

So, with an understanding of vectors, billiards players can predict where both
balls will go following a collision, allowing them to sink more target balls while
keeping the cue ball safely on the table.