This post is co-written with Jonathan Jung, Mike Band, Michael Chi, and Thompson Bliss at the National Football League.
A coverage scheme refers to the rules and responsibilities of each football defender tasked with stopping an offensive pass. It is at the core of understanding and analyzing any football defensive strategy. Classifying the coverage scheme for every pass play will provide insights of the football game to teams, broadcasters, and fans alike. For instance, it can reveal the preferences of play callers, allow deeper understanding of how respective coaches and teams continuously adjust their strategies based on their opponent’s strengths, and enable the development of new defensive-oriented analytics such as uniqueness of coverages (Seth et al.). However, manual identification of these coverages on a per-play basis is both laborious and difficult because it requires football specialists to carefully inspect the game footage. There is a need for an automated coverage

Continue reading