As a football coach, you’ve worked tirelessly to get where you are. You’ve put in the hours, done the thankless tasks, endured the late nights and long bus rides.
The story of Hudl doesn’t exist without you. From our early days, we’ve understood the difficulties of your job and worked to save you time during your week. That commitment to removing time-consuming tasks led to tools like our Hudl Focus football camera and the Focus Exchange Network to make film capture and exchange effortless.
Hudl Assist brought those time savings to football game analysis. “Assist is where we saw the immediate value of breaking down this data for coaches,” said Hudl Product Manager Luz Martes. “They were taking their own time out of their very busy lives to get this data. We saw that doing that for them was such a value add.”
Now, we’re building the next generation of time-saving tools with a goal in mind: doubling down on data to give you a greater edge.
The Future of Football with Hudl COO Matt Mueller
Building for Better Decisions
Why is now the time to make this push? Because of what we’ve seen and heard from coaches.
“Football has [traditionally] leaned on a coach’s understanding and philosophy about the game and how you apply that to an approach,” said Hudl Senior Product Manager Oliver Hypolite-Bishop.
But as a new generation of coaches steps in, philosophies evolve. Younger coaches are embracing the idea that numbers can directly impact wins. “Now, you’re seeing the impact of winning decisions based on data,” said Hypolite-Bishop. “Coaches are tangibly seeing the outcome.”
Data helps teams feel more prepared leading up to and during games. “[Teams] tell us, ‘this helped me so much when it came to understanding my opponent's tendencies, understanding my own tendencies,’” said Martes.
“It’s confidence in real-time decisions you make in the game, knowing that you've crossed off every T because you have confidence in the potential of the outcomes,” added Hypolite-Bishop.
Here’s how we’re bringing you better data so you can make better decisions, this season and beyond.
Tagging individual players is invaluable for both self and opponent scouting. But it’s a time-consuming, manual task. “We’ve heard teams say if they’re doing it themselves, they’re spending an hour, two hours,” said Martes.
Assist+ introduces automatic player tagging for offensive skill positions, with plans to expand to additional positions. Previously, tagging was limited to standard ODK event outcomes like “passing touchdown.” Now, it tells you who made the play: “Quarterback X threw a 40-yard touchdown pass to receiver Y.”
“We're using those stats to build more comprehensive performance data of every athlete involved in the football season,” said Hypolite-Bishop.
Skill position tagging extends to your opponents' games, giving you a faster path to the insights you need. “That’s easily talking about 8 plus hours [saved] if you’re in the middle of the season, trying to scout every game your opponent has played,” said Martes.
Each of those tags links directly to video, so if a coach is scouting quarterback X or receiver Y, they can easily find every touchdown connection between them, build playlists and locate specific clips.
Having this level of stats and data linked to video also helps in recruiting. With recruiters already on the Hudl platform, Assist+ helps athletes tell their stories and gives college evaluators a faster path to finding the right fit.
“The tagging that we’re introducing answers that performance question of ‘can they play at a high level and perform in a game,’” Hypolite-Bishop added. “We build all those moments so that recruiters can easily get to the video they need to answer those key questions.”
A Clearer Picture of Performance With Athlete Tracking
Coaches naturally build opinions based on what they see and feel. But what happens when those assumptions aren’t backed by the facts?
When it comes to athlete performance, the eye test and intuition often lead the way at the high school level. This results in some gaps between perception and reality.
Our newest addition, Titan, is here to close those gaps.
Available this season, Titan is a wearable GPS athlete tracker that pairs seamlessly with your Hudl video and stats to provide a complete picture of how your athletes perform.
“[Titan] is going to add another layer of data that teams don’t necessarily have, like how fast the athletes are going,” said Martes. “That’s information that helps make smart decisions.”
Titan gives you objective data to validate or challenge what you’re seeing on the field. If your team is struggling in the fourth quarter, Titan’s speed and effort metrics can reveal whether it’s a schematic issue or simply fatigue.
Instead of guessing, coaches get clear, verifiable evidence to guide smarter adjustments like dialing back practice intensity or modifying workloads, so players stay fresh late in games and throughout the season.
Hudl Focus shows you what happened on the field. Assist and Assist+ tell you the statistical outcomes. Titan closes the loop with physical data that explains athlete training and performance.
It’s built to help you enter every game confident that your team can compete for all four quarters.
Data is going to be the starting point for how [coaches] go about structuring their week, preparing for an opponent. They’re going to use it to tell them where they need to focus their time and energy.
Shane Regel, Product Manager, Hudl
The Next Evolution of Football Data
What’s in the works for the future? Look no further than how college and pro teams are using Hudl IQ's football data analysis to see what’s coming to high school football.
Hudl IQ specializes in contextual physical metrics, which combine the capabilities of Assist+ and Titan. “We’re looking at stitching events and tracking together,” said Hudl Product Manager Shane Regel. “This allows for a lot better evaluation of players’ capabilities within the context of a football game.”
The 40-yard dash has always been the gold standard for measuring speed, but timed speed doesn’t always match game speed. Titan helps by tracking game speed, but Hudl IQ takes it a step further by measuring speed within a specific event, like how fast a defensive back broke on a ball to cause an incompletion.
“We’re going one level further than just, ‘are they fast?’” said Regel. “We’re providing, ‘are they fast within the context of a football play that a coach wants to evaluate?’”
For now, it’s exclusively available to college and pro teams, but we’re excited to bring it to high school football.
The Future of Football Coaching Workflows
For coaches tapping into the full power of Hudl’s data, the future means faster, more efficient workflows. Your football video analysis and performance data will work seamlessly together, helping you find the most impactful, instructive moments quicker.
“[Data] is going to be the starting point for how [coaches] go about structuring their week, preparing for an opponent,” said Regel. “They’re going to use it to tell them where they need to focus their time and energy.”
“It’s going to give them the chance to maximize game-winning potential,” added Hypolite-Bishop.
Helping you win games is what drives us. At Hudl, we live and breathe football just like you do, and we’re committed to saving you time by delivering video and data that no one else can provide. We’ve come a long way together, and we’re just getting started.
