Former Giants Senior Director of Information Named NFL VP of Replay
When Russell Yurk decided to leave the National Football League's offices last summer, it left an important position open. The league announced the opening and spent most of last June searching through their options for a possible replacement for Yurk, who left his post as the NFL's vice president of replay in the summer of 2023 to join the Big Ten Conference.
Since then, the NFL's officiating offices have declined to comment publicly on who officially took over the position after Yurk's departure. However, it appears that Jon Berger, a longtime operations employee with the New York Giants who left the team in 2021, will fill that role.
Berger graduated from Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan. While in high school, Berger became pen pals with then-Giants owner Wellington Mara. In the summer of 1981, Berger began his time in the National Football League as a summer intern for the Giants. In 1985, he graduated with a Computer Science & Applied Mathematics degree, which he'd put to good use.
In 1986, he became a full-time intern for the Giants. Berger quickly climbed the ranks of the analytics field well before analytics became what it is today. In fact, at the time, it wasn't even called analytics, as Berger would eventually be promoted to the team's computer coordinator in 1987.
In 2007, Berger became the Giant's senior director of football information and would stay in the role until 2021. When then-general manager David Gettleman made plans to restructure the information technology department, prompting Berger and the Giants to agree to part ways.
"I've never been anything but a Giant, but it's time to go try something different," Berger said via the New York Post. "It's been an interesting period. I sensed I wasn't really having that much fun anymore. They all want things done differently, but it's essentially the same thing."
"Nothing to do with the coach [Joe Judge], I love the coach. He's gonna be awesome. He is already awesome. It's just time for something different. It would be a shame to have done just one thing for an entire career."
After leaving the Giants, Berger joined the NFL's officiating office as a replay officiating trainer in 2021 and has now taken over as the league's vice president of replay, according to the NFL Operations website.
He joins one-time Giants defensive coordinator Perry Fewell (Senior Vice President, Officiating Communications and Administration) and former Giants offensive lineman Roman Oben (Vice President, Football Development) as part of the operations team.
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