NFL opens Pandora's Box by offering All-22 tape to public

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d82a0b2d8/article/nfl-opens-pandoras-box-by-offering-all22-tape-to-public

by evo_9 • 14 years ago

107 105 14 years ago

bartonfink3• 14 years ago

This is very exciting, as there's a lot of strategy to American football that isn't plainly visible when the camera just follows the ball as it does on television. It's not going to showcase technique very well, but it'll go a long way towards explaining e.g. why some wide receivers are always open, why some players always seem to be in the right position to interrupt a pass, etc. I'd actually find it very interesting to see something like a Coursera course using film from this to explain different plays, packages, etc.

However, I'm not sure it's of wide interest to HN. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one here who likes NFL football.

kd0amg• 14 years ago

However, I'm not sure it's of wide interest to HN. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one here who likes NFL football.

HN users probably aren't much into football, but they do seem to enjoy finding out about strategy involved in things they haven't thought much about.

dfc• 14 years ago

"HN users probably aren't much into football"

Why do you think this? Are we too busy cleaning our pocket protectors and playing Dungeons and Dragons?

fusiongyro• 14 years ago

Hit the nail on the head for me. I don't really give a damn about football, but I found the article interesting, came here to blow smoke about it, found jerf had beaten me to it.

My wife and I love the show "The League," but I wouldn't be able to watch it without her there to explain the football references, which are plentiful. I find myself idly wondering what it would take to write a fantasy football site and what the benefits could be.

I inferred the existence of high quality geeks who care a lot about football from my geologist friend, who told me a few years ago that every year somebody releases a modified ROM of NES Tecmo Superbowl with updates for the current season.

404error4• 14 years ago

I'm interested in this as well, specially being able to see the Tampa 2 defense in action.

AtTheLast• 14 years ago

Same here. I hear the announcers throw around a bunch of different terms describing formations or strategies. Now, we will actually be able to see them in action as a whole.

sachinag• 14 years ago

It's not Coursera, but for $25 a year, USA Football has a metric asston of material: http://usafootball.com/coach

jedberg3• 14 years ago

> However, I'm not sure it's of wide interest to HN. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one here who likes NFL football.

You'd probably be surprised. I know I was surprised when I got to college and found more football fans amongst my engineer friends than my humanities friends.

It turns out the game is very complex and deep and discussing strategy can be quite interesting.

I wasn't a football fan when I arrived in college, but I was when I left.

bartonfink3• 14 years ago

I'm very happy to be mistaken. I was a casual fan in college, but the worm turned for me when I started hanging out with my brother in law who plays at Ball State. Hearing someone accurately predict what's going to happen before the ball is snapped, and then explain why (e.g. "they ran it up the gut because the linebacker had his weight back on his heels") really opened my eyes to the depth. If there's any HN football fans out here in Denver who'd like to get together one weekend to watch a game, I'd love to meet up!

nuclear_eclipse• 14 years ago

I think the biggest difference between "normal" football fans and the football enthusiasts like me and the ones I met in my engineering classes boils down to what reasons you enjoy watching the game and, perhaps with overlap between the groups, what level you're paying attention to the actual plays being called and run.

Most people love football because they identify with a team, and almost exclusively watch games involving their team, and aren't really paying too much attention to the strategy. They know the rules and the different types of plays, but they are really there for the tribal passion that a rough contact sport like football tends to evoke.

On the flip side, I don't actively seek to watch football games for a single team; if I happen to go somewhere that's playing a football game on TV, I love watching it, and don't care who wins, because I just enjoy the strategic and tactical decisions being made on and off the field. Watching a play unfold and seeing the snap decisions being made and the reactions from both teams to the changing field is truly fascinating.

I do still follow the results of my old hometown team, the Cincinnati Bengals, but more out of humorous pity at how terrible they are year after year than out of any identification with them or desire to see them win.

But hey, maybe I'm just ascribing what I want to see from the data, and maybe my opinion of "normal" people is skewed from growing up in Ohio compared to somewhere else in the country.

mindcrime2• 14 years ago

However, I'm not sure it's of wide interest to HN. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one here who likes NFL football.

Nah, there's at least two of us.

#GODOLPHINS

_o99w• 14 years ago

Three, Phins fan here too.

phildeschaine• 14 years ago

I grew up a Lions fan, but man, that HBO show Hard Knocks got me hooked on your team. Now I find myself wanting to watch Dolphins' games and hoping Joe Philbin gets it together.

lifeisstillgood• 14 years ago

I assume we are not talking Thoroughbred horses here?

I do not want to risk another "oh HN is becoming Reddit" discussion, but could we focus on the reasons why one of the worlds largest sports organisations does not want its fans to see a wideshot of a pitch and how on earth they think wifi enabled phones, 3D cameras and 10billion channels will do to their reasoning in 5 years?

aorshan3• 14 years ago

Fins up! Gotta love being a dolphins fan, nothing like year after year of disappointment. At least we're not the cubs.

sp3323• 14 years ago

The NFL's policies on footage are an interesting example of information control. People in the audience can clearly see all the players on the field, but people watching at home are not allowed to. And even though the NFL has put tons of money into excellent cameras and awesome post-processing effects, they still hadn't released the most informative camera views!

neilkelty2• 14 years ago

It's a user experience question - the tv is optimized for fans interested in watching the game action, not analyzing all the strategy.

papercruncher• 14 years ago

You're not alone but the startup community definitely has less than average number of people interested in football and sports in general. I don't have data on this, it's the feeling I get as someone doing a startup in sports and talking to other entrepreneurs in the bay area.

freshrap6• 14 years ago

Are there many sports based startups? I'd love to learn more about some.

aderaynal2• 14 years ago

here's my startup/side project: http://app.pickemfirst.com

bps44842• 14 years ago

numberfire out of nyc does advanced fantasy stats:

https://www.numberfire.com/

drivebyacct2• 14 years ago

Hudl.

icelancer2• 14 years ago

I do biomechanical research and train baseball pitchers. I have a big blog post coming up about machine learning using PITCHf/x data to see if you can predict injuries with publicly available data from MLBAM (hint: future is promising!).

My company is Driveline Baseball / Driveline Biomechanics Research. We also develop wearable computing technology to capture kinematics of the movie arm (you know this as "pitching mechanics").

Check us out!

http://www.drivelinebaseball.com (Seattle, WA)

alokv28• 14 years ago

Some great blogs that cover the Xs and Os really well.

Here's one - http://smartfootball.com/

bps44842• 14 years ago

Seconded. If you want to get started on something that you may have always wondered about, here is some in depth analysis of the peyton manning offense in indy:

http://smartfootball.com/offense/peyton-manning-and-tom-moor...

jmharvey• 14 years ago

> However, I'm not sure it's of wide interest to HN. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one here who likes NFL football.

I'm sure there are plenty of HN readers who are football fans, you just don't see many sports stories because they're generally considered off-topic. From http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html :

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. ... If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

This all-22 discussion is probably on-topic for HN because it has more to do with the pros and cons of exerting control over exactly how people consume your product than with the specifics of the sport.

404error4• 14 years ago

What I would like is an API to better track players for my Fantasy League. Or a chat feature in the Mobile App to trash talk on Sundays.

induscreep• 14 years ago

There is a chat feature in apps (iOS)…it's called matchup smack of league smack or something like that.

404error4• 14 years ago

Android user here.

jolan• 14 years ago

NFL provides a JSON feed which you can parse:

http://blog.burntsushi.net/nfl-live-statistics-with-python

rhizome• 14 years ago

Are we supposed to already know what "All-22 tape" is?

mikeash• 14 years ago

Of course not. That's why the article explains it in the second paragraph.

bartonfink3• 14 years ago

Good point. All-22 tape, which is defined in the article, is footage of a football game that shows all 22 players on the field simultaneously. It is almost certainly not the footage you'll see if you watch a game on television, which follows the ball or, more rarely, individual players.

jedberg3• 14 years ago

No, but since HN has a policy of using only the author's title, the OP can't change it.

dailyrorschach• 14 years ago

This could be very exciting for amateur analysis of the game. That could potentially have some really cool effects on how we understand the game as data could be recorded and looked at closer, maybe an even greater data based era on the horizon for the NFL.

w1ntermute• 14 years ago

This is going to result in a lot of realtime "backseat coaching", especially with the rise of Twitter. Not so great for coaches doing a poor job, but great for the fans and those who want to learn more in-depth football strategy.

jerf2• 14 years ago

The argument in this article is just ridiculous. Handwringing about giving fans more information because they might not interpret it correctly? Breaking news: A lot of people are already plenty wrong with the current amount of information. They'll be wrong with less, they'll be wrong with more, they'll be wrong if the info level stays the same. This is therefore a null argument.

Evbn2• 14 years ago

The same argument was used to defend closed access journals: the public can't be trusted to understand raw scientific research.

wangarific• 14 years ago

Anytime you open up anything like this, you force the "experts" to prove they're actually experts... and that's often difficult.

001sky• 14 years ago

This is a good point. What's ironic is that American Football playbooks, formations, and strategies are almost ludicrously complex. And the number of people that think athletes are "stupid" is amusingly large. A large number of the latter are ignorant of the former, including a large chunk of "intellectuals" contributing to closed access journals. people are intelligent in various ways, 3D spatial intelligence for example does not translate into wirting per-se. Nor does it follow that because you are book-smart you will have a clue about analyzing game film.

brucehart• 14 years ago

I think they are just using this as a way to advertise the NFL video product (which seems like it is not selling very well). When you tell a bunch of armchair football experts "This is for experts only. You may not be able to handle it.", many people immediately look to prove them wrong.

This article reminds me of the time I went car shopping and wanted to test drive a 6 cylinder version of a car after driving the 4 cylinder. The salesman gave me this really phony pitch saying "I have to warn you, many people can't handle a car this fast. But once you experience the power of the 6 cylinder engine, there's no going back!". In reality, I didn't see a huge difference between the two models (I didn't buy either one), but I can see how this technique makes it easier for him to sell the more expensive car.

swang3• 14 years ago

I don't think this is the case necessarily. People have been asking for all-22 footage for a long time and this is the answer they've always given before this season. The fact that they continue to parrot this line makes me believe that's how most nfl executives feel about it

tatsuke95• 14 years ago

Yeah, the article was pretty weak, I agree. The author was clearly reaching for something to write about the subject.

But the NFL opening up this footage is bad-ass!

anigbrowl• 14 years ago

The argument in this article is just ridiculous

It's on the NFL site. It's advertorial, marketing disguised as journalism. It's not making an argument, it's just stirring one up to get attention.

AgentConundrum• 14 years ago

> It's advertorial, marketing disguised as journalism.

It's barely even disguised. If it were published by a news organization[1], or really just "someone else", then you would be right.

This is an article on NFL.com about an NFL product. It's straight up advertising. Publishing an "article" to say "this seems 'risky'; why would we even offer this product to you, our fevered fans" is about the thinnest disguise an ad could have.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

jerf2• 14 years ago

I'd probably be less offended if I didn't see this argument so often. As Evbn points out, it's not the first time I've heard it. I find the premise deeply insulting.

tgb• 14 years ago

Clearly there are varying gradations of being wrong and just because they're wrong doesn't mean they're as completely wrong, or as frequently wrong; the article only claims that they will be more wrong. See the http://lesswrong.com/lw/mm/the_fallacy_of_gray/.

swang3• 14 years ago

"And therein lies the problem with All-22 tape becoming available to the general public, particularly when it comes to passing plays. Someone will be open and many fans will assume that the quarterback did not make the right read or was locked onto another receiver. Yet in reality there is a progression on every pass play -- based on the coverage -- that a quarterback must rely on to determine who gets the ball. What might appear to be open on the All-22 might not be on the progression."

Hey guy posting on NFL.com, thanks for assuming the entire fanbase consists of complete idiots!

Ask any legitimate football fan if they understand the concept of QB progressions and they'll ask you if you understand how to recursively parse a binary tree in-order (assuming of course you're a programmer).

ESPN/NFL films has been feeding this to us for years using their access to All-22 so I find it hard to believe that when us plebs get access to it we'll suddenly forget that a QB can miss a receiver because he was under pressure from the pass rush or fooled by some defensive scheme.

Literally this past week when Peyton Manning and the Broncos played the Atlanta Falcons on Monday Night, ESPN/Sportscenter kept repeatedly showing us how Peyton Manning was fooled at the beginning by the Falcon's coverage schemes with... All-22 footage. I'm sure there will be fools who will react the way this author describes, but a lot of fans are way more hardcore and want access to All-22 to improve their understanding of the game.

xpose2000• 14 years ago

"Hey guy posting on NFL.com, thanks for assuming the entire fanbase consists of complete idiots!"

That's Michael Lombardi. Perhaps you are not giving him enough credit as a former NFL executive? He is more than just "some guy".

"ESPN/NFL films has been feeding this to us for years using their access to All-22"

That is a partially correct statement. They would highlight specific plays and break them down for us (Ron Jaworski is great at this). However, for the first time the fans can get these raw tapes of footage and break it down themselves. With no help from the pros.

Easier said than done.

swang3• 14 years ago

My point isn't that he isn't an expert on the NFL. But I would say he does not know much if he thinks giving people more information will make people jump to conclusions they've already made beforehand. Giving people this information is not any more detrimental than broadcasting the game on a TV. You will always have people shouting, "what an idiot" when a QB misses a receiver, adding this will at least give them additional information.

roc• 14 years ago

I don't think the 'average fan' is ever breaking anything down on their own. It just requires too much dedication and time to build the knowledge.

But the key is that this isn't being released to just the average fans.

What we're more likely to see, is a cottage industry of superfans springing up to 'go-Jaworski' on more plays, more games, etc. And that content will be consumed by the average fan.

jazzdog• 14 years ago

Condescending, elitist BS. OMG, the public will form uninformed opinions, because they don't know what I know, this could be horrible. I do not understand the viewpoint. The public already has uninformed opinions about NFL players, coaches, etc. Big deal. Allow them to be more educated on the game, especially since the NFL would not exist without the public's interest.

siculars• 14 years ago

I'll be the first to admit I'm no aficionado but I can't see how more information is a bad thing. The OP feels as if the unwashed masses, once having access to this font of knowledge, will no doubt arrive at the wrong conclusions. To which I say: ya, well, so what?

If anything this will be a boon for the NFL by only encouraging more engagement with their fan base.

jsm386• 14 years ago

And the first consequence of opening that Pandora's Box would be even more ammunition (not that any more is needed) for fans/writers/anyone with a passing interest in NFL to point out how awful the replacement refs are

refs: http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8394351/the-nfl-official-m... http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8393575/replacement-offici... http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/8402489/nfl-replacement-of...

m_myers2• 14 years ago

This announcement dates from June, so I believe the footage is already available. So far I haven't heard anyone cite the All-22 footage for anything other than Grantland.com articles.

BklynJay• 14 years ago

Sweet. This is really gonna help my Madden game.

jpxxx• 14 years ago

What's weird about professional sports is that the major franchises seem to think they're doing what they do for their own sake instead of entertaining their customers.

philwelch• 14 years ago

That's no weirder than lawyers thinking they're doing what they do to win a case rather than to achieve justice. The NFL entertains customers by being a serious, competitive league, just as criminal justice is supposed to work via an adversarial system. (Before anyone else points it out, let's just say the NFL works FAR better than the criminal justice system....)

blerrrgh• 14 years ago

Don't forget: There's an incentive to win your case SLOOOOOWWWWLY, when you're paid by the hour.

law• 14 years ago

It's incredible that they're offering this tape--especially from a computer vision perspective. With enough data, one could conceivably write a program that predicts a team's next play based on the players' pre-snap formation and the previous plays.

m_myers2• 14 years ago

SportVU [1] already does some interesting work with NBA statistics based on computer vision (see [2]).

I wouldn't be surprised to see similar technology in the NFL soon.

[1] http://www.sportvu.com/

[2] http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/tech/post/_/id/492/492

thisAintNoGame• 14 years ago

I actually dont think you could do that because teams need to randomize amongst plays or else defenses would crush them. That is one of the coolest (in my opinion) parts about football is the amount of strategic depth that goes into it. For a quick reference: http://www.advancednflstats.com/2008/06/game-theory-and-runp...

jimmytucson2• 14 years ago

Actually, this kind of thing has been around for a long time.

Football Outsiders does game charting and "advanced NFL statistics". People have published papers on using artificial neural networks to predict play calling, success rates, even injuries and stuff like that.

But this does give us the ability to enrich the data quite a bit. When you watch the live film you really can't see who blew a coverage where or why the safety didn't get to the running back in time to make a tackle. I think if you just watch the TV angles then you might not be convinced that pump fakes actually do anything to confuse the defense.

There's a lot to be gained here by statisticians and casual fans alike but it's hard to see that when only 1/3 of the action is visible at any given time.

icelancer2• 14 years ago

Football Outsiders abuses the use of statistics and engages in data snooping (the "study" on running backs comes to mind) to make their points. They're far, far behind organizations and people who have lent credence to sports analytics, like Baseball Prospectus, Tom Tango, Pete Palmer, Bill James, etc.

Lukeas142• 14 years ago

I never understood the fear of fans wrongly criticizing teams/players/coaches based on the All-22 tape. All other sports make their own equivalent of it available allowing fans to see every mistake made by every player. As far as I know it hasn't resulted in any worse sportsmanship. Football in particular has always had Monday morning quarterbacks and always will. The media has always had access to the All-22 tape and do break down the best and worst plays every week. I'm glad they're finally opening this up but does anyone know what they were so scared of before?

This does open up a huge opportunity for third party analysis, most obviously for sports betting and fantasy football tips. With a much smaller sample size of games and plays football will never become as predictable as baseball but it will be exciting to see what the general public will do with this.

Also for any high school defensive backs who previously had no way to study how the pros play their position, this is huge!

dhugiaskmak2• 14 years ago

    All other sports make their own equivalent of it available allowing fans to see every mistake made by every player.

What other sports do that?

Lukeas142• 14 years ago

MLB.tv and TNT Overtime(NBA) both allow you to watch games online with your own choice of camera angles. The MLS seems to be lacking this option.

curtin• 14 years ago

An interesting thread was on HN last November about this same topic (which at the time I had no idea about): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3275698

richardjordan• 14 years ago

I've thought for a while now that the NFL network - their TV presence, the website - is the future of how sports will be. It's an incredibly good product if you're a football fan (as I am - go Niners).

The TV channel is well done for the fan, a mix of informality with information - bunch of faces that make us nostalgic due to their past achievements combined with solid anchors who have personality but don't try to outshine the hall-of-famers who know their stuff.

The website is very well done, interactive, some fun game dynamics. Their apps are good enough - much room for growth but they're getting better.

The all-22 game tape is a nice step forward here.

I think people who want to study the future of pro-sports media in the evolving media marketplace could do a lot worse than watching what the NFL is doing.

dhugiaskmak2• 14 years ago

NFL Redzone is the greatest innovation in sports in the last 20 years, if not ever. I didn't watch a single game on FOX or CBS last season and I won't this year either. I honestly can't believe that the NFL doesn't charge a big subscription fee for it.

[1] http://redzonetv.nfl.com/

burntsushi3• 14 years ago

The glaring omission here is DATA. I just want data, and I don't want to have to parse a JSON feed to get my hands on a limited subset of that data.

Of course, an entire business model is in my way, but alas, I don't share your perspective. The NFL is way behind IMO.

edw519• 14 years ago

There's already a budding aftermarket...

A gif that demos why Pittsburgh Steelers tight end Heath Miller is such a great run blocker:

http://cdn1.sbnation.com/imported_assets/1198471/steelers3.g...

adestefan2• 14 years ago

That is not All-22 footage; it's just standard HDTV footage.

All-22 footage is from "overhead" (at least as high as safely possible in a stadium) and shows about 2/3 of the field at all times. The All-22 footage does not have the onscreen extras such as down and distance nor the generated 1st down yellow line.

brianpan• 14 years ago

Also, you can see all 22 players. :)

theycallmemorty• 14 years ago

What is so spectacular here? His ability to get down the field or his positioning and ability to not get caught up at the line?? Surely the fact that a 275 lb. lineman with velocity pancaked a 185 lb defensive back is not notable. :)

dkkarthik• 14 years ago

First, I'm so glad that there are so many NFL fans on HN. Now to the article; its going to be like getting your news from blogs. When you make something accessible to the masses, the quality gets diluted .. but I'm certain it makes things much more widely available. I'm willing to bet there are die-hard fans out there who are knowledgeable enough to put out quality analysis ala the analysis on NFL.com. If you listen to all the talking heads, you might not have a great experience. But over time, refine the opinions you consume, and I suspect we'll all come away for the better. I'm all for empowering the masses !

protomyth• 14 years ago

tldr: "Oh my, the unwashed masses who pay our salaries get to see the full field and are too stupid to make intelligent commentary on it."

I am having a hard time trying to remember a sport that is more about the show than the actual sport as the NFL. MLB and NASCAR seem to get the whole package, but not the NFL.

lucian303• 14 years ago

Maybe they should open up their games to be viewable online streaming LIVE and then their service might be worth paying for. It's 2012. Get with it NFL. There has been a world cup and a euro 2012 streamed live online successfully. FREE!

Rewind is nice if you missed something, but not so great because if you are watching a later game on rewind it'll spoil all earlier games.

yaz• 14 years ago

The article basically says "A football match is now like a complicated, high-level chess match. It takes deep understanding to know what's going on, so only those parts of the match that most viewers can understand ought to be screened". This is not sound. By extension one could argue that complicated games should not be screened at all.

dumb_dumb• 14 years ago

I think this is going to be fun because you will be able to concentrate on one player. Imagine if they had done this while, e.g., Lawrence Taylor, was still playing?

This is a real treat because we will get the see the attributed greatness* that previously only coaches, players and NFL Films could verify.

* The type of players for which coaches make adjustments, a week before the game, to account for.

campuscodi• 14 years ago

I have it. Never watched it more than 5 minutes. Unless you're a coach that film is boring. NFL is just entertainment to me, so the real game broadcast matters more than the actual tactics and little pieces of blocking details.

NFL opens Pandora's Box by offering All-22 tape to public

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