Amazon Prime Video took a different approach during the offseason as it looked to improve its coverage of “Thursday Night Football.”
They did so in a huge way by finding a way to help fans understand and enjoy football better.
Defensive alerts are on Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats and it is an AI-powered feature that will identify players in real-time with the best odds of rushing the quarterback. It tracks player movements before the snap. Just think about Tony Romo when he used to predict plays before they happened for CBS in his first season as a broadcast.
This new technology is that on steroids.
This was developed by former creator of the XFL2020 Rules and Technology and Stanford offensive lineman Sam Schwartzstein.
The highlighted circle appears under what is considered a potential pass rusher and tracking for all players is done by RFID chips in their shoulder pads.
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During the offseason, Amazon’s machine learning system analyzed 35,000 plays to teach its computers to predict which defenders might blitz on a given play. From Sportico:
“Shortly after the end of last season, (TNF analytics expert Sam) Schwartzstein met with Amazon’s computer vision machine learning team, prepared with a list of 20 possible features he dreamed up. His most “pie in the sky” idea, he said, was the creation of a neural network that could analyze video of a defensive formation in real-time and identify who was likely to come on an otherwise unexpected blitz.
Schwartzstein started at center for two seasons at Stanford, so he knows his football. But the model Amazon’s team developed using players’ position and acceleration, all captured by cameras, proved more adept than Schwartzstein at predicting who was coming after the quarterback.
“I cried the first time I saw this,” Schwartzstein said. Amazon then refined the model nine more times.”
The data it has comes from the league’s Next Gen Stats, which tracks all players and provides analytics data to the NFL.
Schwartzstein had to make sure researchers had a three-dimensional picture of the data in order to identify the players for the defensive warnings. The video contrasts a player standing in a three-point stance with an edge rusher lining up and getting ready to blitz.
The Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats feed uses an all-22 coach’s camera angle but includes announcers Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit and sideline reports from Kaylee Hartung.
Defensive alerts remain in final testing but viewers will be able to see other elements using AI during Thursday night’s game between the New Orleans Saints and Jacksonville Jaguars. Viewers were able to see the route trees receivers are running along with highlighting who is open and their chances of converting a first down.
We are seriously in the future of football.
