Prime Video’s use of AI, Next Gen Stats on NFL games is helping viewers understand the game better

CULVER CITY —  The Los Angeles Rams defense appeared to be content to drop back in coverage and prevent San Francisco’s Brock Purdy from completing a Hail Mary on the final play of their Thursday night game on Dec. 12.

The broadcast on Amazon Prime Video saw it differently, though.

Before Purdy snapped the ball, a defensive alert appeared on the screen, indicating that Rams inside linebacker Christian Rozeboom could rush the quarterback. Sure enough, Rozeboom came in on a rush and sacked Purdy for a 6-yard loss to end the game.

Besides the Rams celebrating, Prime Video’s “Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats” production crew were exchanging high fives.

As Prime Video wraps up its third season doing NFL games with an AFC wild-card matchup between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens on Saturday night, the “Prime Vision” feed and use of artificial intelligence in the broadcasts continue to change the way football fans are able to analyze and understand the game.

Prime Video senior coordinating producer Alex Strand said one of the guiding tenants in the streamer’s NFL coverage has been trying to simplify the complex strategies that happen during games.

“It doesn’t matter how many years of football experience you have, we can’t do what AI can do,” he said. “In the case of defensive alerts, all we’re doing is putting a single red circle on a player. A diehard may look at that and see the safeties crashing or the corners indicating they’re going to come.” Someone who might not know the game as well might see the red circle and say, ‘Look here, something might happen,’ and they see the corner blitz, and it’s amazing.”

Defensive Alerts is in its second season and also featured on the main “Thursday Night Football” broadcast. It tracks the movement of players prior to the snap and identifies potential blitzers. Via machine learning and custom logic, a highlighted red circle appears under what is considered a potential pass rusher.

Prime targets — identifying receivers with the best chance to make a catch and get a first down — is also in its second season, along with identifying how many yards an offense needs to gain on third down in order for analytics to recommend “go for it” on fourth down and field goal probability on different points of the field.

Amazon’s Computer Vision Machine Learning team developed all of the AI models. Prime Video’s production, tech, and engineering teams visited Tel Aviv last year to start the process, which continues to evolve.

The data used to fuel the AI models come from the league’s Next Gen Stats, which tracks all players and provides analytics data. Amazon Web Services has been the NFL’s official technology provider in developing Next Gen Stats since 2017.

Prime Video added more this season with pressure alerts, defensive vulnerabilities, and the ability to identify if a team is in man or zone coverage. The pressure alerts track defenders that could make a sack or disrupt the play. Defensive vulnerabilities highlight areas on the field where offenses might be able to attack in the passing game.

“What’s awesome about working with Next Gen Stats is we’re now able to define everything we see,” said TNF Prime Vision analyst Sam Schwartzstein. “There are certain things like a double team which might seem easy to chart that, but it took time and energy to get it on their side, but it’s still something we talk about from a football perspective.”

What also makes the “Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats” alternate broadcast different is that the primary announce team of Al Michaels, Kirk Herbstreit, and Kaylee Hartung is used, with Schwartzstein coming in at specific points of the game and also between quarters to provide analysis or keys from Next Gen Stats.

“You get all the great information,” Schwartzstein said. “Next Gen Stats starts with it, Kirk’s able to give you that single data point, and then on Prime Vision, we’re able to go one step deeper to try and make you see the game from a different point of view.”

The biggest improvement with the broadcast has been the skycam being the primary camera, giving viewers a closer look at all 22 players and providing the “Madden view” since it is the same vantage point for those playing the Madden video game.

For the first 2 ? seasons, the primary view on Prime Vision was the all-22 sideline camera. While viewers could see a play develop, it was a very high vantage point.

The switch to the high sky cam for the Nov. 7 game between the Cincinnati Bengals and Ravens definitely captured attention on social media. According to Prime Video social media figures, Prime Vision received 4,921 mentions on Twitter/X, TikTok and Reddit for the first nine broadcasts. After the camera switch, the mentions over the last seven games were 315,046.

“I love the traditional all-22, but the high sky is just awesome just from a quarterback’s view of the world,” said Prime Video global head of sports Jay Marine. ”We’ve been at it three years and the way to think about it is (Prime Vision) kind of our invention playground, if you will. We think it’s great, but also the goal is over time is we will graduate things that are working into the main broadcast.”

Three analysts from the NFL’s Next Gen Stats department are also part of the production crew to analyze trends or schemes during a broadcast. The department also supplies data packets to all network broadcast crews, analyzing matchups to watch, pressure rates by defensive linemen, how much pressure an offensive lineman has allowed and other trends on offense and defense.

Keegan Abdoo, who works for the league, said working with the Prime Video teams has helped their analyst with other projects throughout the season.

“The goal is to get everyone to be able to understand what they’re seeing on the field and then know where to find the data to tell that story, rather than if you want to look in the data and find a story,” he said. “It’s always going to be a much more compelling story when you can marry the film to the data and start in the film.”

Reedy writes for the Associated Press.