The Process
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NFL Matchday Solution
The NFL Matchday Solution was created as part of a league wide deal to provide the league with wearable data during games. This data includes metrics such as max velocity, distance, distance/min and other relevant data. Due to the large quantity of athletes on a professional football team (doubled when both home and away teams are tracked), a large amount of work included backend fixes to accurately track large quantities. My primary responsibility was operating this system for every home game during the Jacksonville Jaguars 2021/22 season. This included all pre game set up, monitoring during the game, and all post game data transfer to the NFL.
During all home football games my role was to confirm all devices and balls were on the correct firmware with the correct settings, map devices to all active players (~100 if both teams are being tracked), and confirm all software is up to date. I would instruct our on field employees to complete a walk test around the perimeter of the field as a sanity check that the system was configured properly and then the game would start.
The Goal
An example of a tactical field showing two athletes throwing a chipped ball back and forth to each other.
The second component to this project was ball tracking in collaboration with Wilson Sporting Goods. These chipped balls track different metrics from the devices on the athletes such as ball height, velocity and spin. As the main NFL match day operator, it was my job to configure and test all game balls for teams we worked with during this test period.
Key points:
Wireless Bluetooth charging using custom designed charger
Ball chips were heat pressed into middle of football so there was no effect on ball performance
View from press box at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, Nevada during a test at Pro Bowl 2022.