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Last week, while in Mobile for the 2019 Senior Bowl, I had an opportunity to interview the Vice President of Zebra Technologies, John Pollard. Zebra Tech is the analytics company that handles the Next Gen Stats brand for the NFL along with handling the data for every player at the Senior Bowl.
They do all the data tracking via chips in shoulder pads and in the footballs. Analytics have been the relatively unexplored frontier of football for some time now as teams and players want to maximize their performance. Zebra Tech is a company that is looking to expand further into the analytics field of the sport.
Here’s an example of what they do for the NFL as the official partner in player tracking:
What's the key to slowing down Tom Brady? Don't blitz him too often, or he'll beat you.
— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) January 31, 2019
The @Patriots are 15-1 when opponents blitz more than 30% of dropbacks since 2016. The Rams defense has blitzed on 26% of dropbacks this season.#GoPats | #SuperBowl pic.twitter.com/zxGnsXSC7c
And some real time data from the most recent Senior Bowl
Lot of cool stuff from @zebratechnology from the @seniorbowl... here is a breakdown of the QBs this year compared to last year with all the key numbers pic.twitter.com/tnLUqihzJw
— Ian Rapoport (@RapSheet) January 23, 2019
How they do things for the football side of their company
Get a peek behind the scenes of our technology being implemented at @seniorbowl this week. #SeniorBowl pic.twitter.com/n1oy8OpJk7
— Zebra Technologies (@ZebraTechnology) January 23, 2019
They even had analytics for Puddles!
We're tracking ball velocity and rotation right now @seniorbowl. Even @GoDucks threw! #SeniorBowl pic.twitter.com/mU9cReZlVm
— Zebra Technologies (@ZebraTechnology) January 25, 2019
For more information about their company, you can visit their website
Without further ado, here’s the audio of the interview!