High tech is making a further incursion into blocking and tackling. Nothing, it seems, is safe from it.

In this latest expression of a commitment to technology, the NFL is permitting a defender to be wired by a radio in his headgear to a coach on the sideline, just as quarterbacks have been since 1994.

Before the 2007 season, the league's executive committee defeated a proposal that would have clicked on a radio for the defense, but then came the "Spygate" scandal involving the New England Patriots and the league acted. Eliminated are the signals that coaches would wigwag to the defense. There is nothing to pilfer.

Whether the radio matter is going to have a meaningful impact on how defenses perform is one of the questions to be explored during an 89th NFL.

"I don't think we know," said Greg Aiello, an NFL senior vice president. Aiello said the radio issue was approved "in terms of equity" — to afford defenses the same electronic advantages offenses have possessed for 14 years.

"Defense is reaction," contended Tom Bass, a former Chargers defensive coordinator. Bass' position is that this radio business is so much static.

Denver Broncos coach Mike Shanahan welcomes being able to communicate with a defender via radio. "I think it's a great thing," said Shanahan. "I've always been in favor of it."

Shanahan's stance contrasts with that of the Patriots' Bill Belichick, who has expressed doubt concerning to what degree, if at all, he will utilize a radio connection to a defender.

After the NFL lodged radios in the helmets of quarterbacks in 1994, offenses improved markedly. Twenty-one of 28 teams scored more points in '94 than they had the previous season.

What cannot be determined is whether the upsurge in scoring in '94 related to quarterbacks being wired or resulted from offenses instrumenting the improvements that occur regularly in the NFL.

To Aiello, meantime, the NFL is preparing to ride what he termed "the optimism and momentum" that by his account were created a year ago. "The nearly perfect (18-1) Patriots, and the Giants coming from out of nowhere to win the Super Bowl," Aiello recited.

That the Giants could have rallied as they did from an 0-2 beginning to Aiello was a measure of what little difference there is in the NFL between winning and losing. "As the commissioner (Roger Goodell) likes to say, we're the ultimate reality show, and we don't know what the scenario is going to be," the NFL executive said. "Half the playoff teams change from year to year."

For all the league's professed optimism, this is a season beginning under a cloud — the possibility of player unrest. Franchise owners have opted out of the league's Collective Bargaining Agreement out of a concern that assigning 60 percent of the league's revenues to players has become burdensome because of stadium and other costs. Unless agreement on a new CBA is reached by March 2010, that season would be played without a salary cap, which could lead some teams to pay lavishly for players. "But that's down the road," Aiello said of possible labor problems. "There can be no impact on this season or the next season."

Some observations:

ON LEVEL OF PLAY: At least at the season's start, it can't be good. Teams have lounged through a preseason that contained precious little hitting, with most teams either utilizing their redoubtables sparingly in exhibition games or not exposing them at all.

In two days of looking in on the Dallas Cowboys' exercises in Oxnard, Calif., a visitor kept waiting for the practice pace to accelerate. It never did. The reason: NFL Europe is no more. In other seasons, teams could flesh out their summer rosters with players from NFL Europe, who did not have to be counted. With the rosters fixed at 80 players, teams chose not to have them further diminished by injuries resulting from contact.

ON PARITY: As the NFL defines it, it means equality. Everything the league does is meant to create parity. This summer, the NFL had help. The most strapped by injuries were teams of the highest quality — the Patriots, by Tom Brady's foot problem; the Indianapolis Colts, by Peyton Manning's infected knee; and the San Diego Chargers, with stars Antonio Gates, Ladanian Tomlinson and Phillip Rivers all coming off injuries that hampered their playoff runs.

ON SURPRISES: Begin by accepting that there are going to be a few. Change is a constant in the NFL. In the 12 seasons since 1996, no fewer than five teams that had not been playoff participants the previous season were parties to the postseason. In 2007, there were six (Green Bay, Jacksonville, Pittsburgh, Tampa Bay, Tennessee and Washington).

This time? Try the Oakland Raiders. They have the guys, having enlisted some quality defenders and drafted Darren McFadden, a running back with an exciting potential. The East Bay team is being dismissed because of the discord between Al Davis and coach Lane Kiffin, but in other times the Raiders thrived in similar conditions. Davis is accustomed to discord. He can live with it. Or try San Francisco. No person is more favorably positioned to achieve a personal breakthrough than quarterback J.T. O'Sullivan, whom Mike Martz is handing the football. O'Sullivan, a career journeyman, gets to instrument Martz's imaginative passing schemes. How fortunate for O'Sullivan.

ON HOW THIS IS GOING TO PLAY OUT: The conditions are there for a season of upheaval unusual even for the NFL. As the Buffalo Bills, the New York Jets, the Cleveland Browns, the Minnesota Vikings, the New Orleans Saints and the Philadelphia Eagles press up from below, teams such as the New England Patriots, the New York Giants and the Indianapolis Colts would seem to be declining. The Chargers? They should be there at the end, but as diminished by injuries as they are, for them to experience a second straight slow start would not be surprising.

Jerry Magee covers the NFL for The San Diego Union-Tribune. Contact his at jerry.magee@uniontrib.com.

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