Could AI Help a Lineman Win the Heisman Trophy?
Could AI Help a Lineman Win the Heisman Trophy?
Applying AI to both data capture and analysis offers the potential to unlock the true value of offensive linemen
In 2020, the year he won the Heisman Trophy, Alabama wide receiver DeVonta Smith had a 94.9 Offense grade, according to PFF.
Only the second receiver ever to win the Heisman, Smith caught 117 passes for 1,856 yards and 23 touchdowns.
Smith beat out six quarterbacks, two running backs, and Florida tight end Kyle Pitts, who finished tenth in the voting.
Meanwhile, Virginia Tech left tackle Christian Darrisaw graded out at 95.6 on his way to generating absolutely zero Heisman talk.
Was Darrisaw any less of a player than those who received votes in 2020? I don’t think so, but who’s to say?
Outside of subjective grades, there is a dearth of offensive line statistics that would allow interested third parties to accurately discern the true difference in performance between players.
Enter Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Much of the focus on AI has rightly gone to the various chatbots, such as ChatGPT, which have brought revolutionary advances to many office tasks.
However, the limit of these chatbots, as I noted in a two-part series last year, is in their training data.
The missing piece is using AI to generate 100% accurate data, then using AI tools like ChatGPT to analyze the video data, create metadata (data about data), then run statistics on the metadata.
Now that would be revolutionary.
And believe it or not, the revolution is upon us.
AI-driven video capture
Companies like Pixellot have already brought to market video technology that supports multiple views as well as AI-driven zoom and tracking on specific players.
Cameras like the S3 can now record game film from a tactical angle, while also producing fully zoomed-in game tape of each individual player on the field.
As a result, we can see heretofore hidden details of offensive line play.
Of course, this isn’t anything PFF couldn’t - and doesn’t already - do, albeit manually and at a more basic level. The difference comes in the degree of detail and the ability to automatically create and track new metrics.
AI-driven analytics
Although Pixellot touts an analytics offering, what they are really offering about is better classified as video editing. The true next step is incorporating a chatbot to generate statistics.
ChatGPT-4o can already do that.
Wait a minute - what does fact checking have to do with tracking football statistics?
Actually, a lot.
What ChatGPT does in the above-cited product feature is identify an assertion in a video, then check it against training data, which is OpenAI’s source of truth for determining the veracity of news.
All it takes are some tweaks to the code to have the bot look for whether or not a lineman pulled on a run blocking play, and if that lineman pulled, was he able to seal the edge.
With the correct code set, training data could be established from a few weeks’ worth of game film.
Then, voilà! The chatbot can now track a new offensive lineman metric. And it can do so automatically for all games recorded on digital video (which, these days, is nearly every FBS game).
New statistics are coming
The dark age of measuring play in the trenches is finally nearing an end.
Thanks to advances in AI technology, we can now automatically generate and evaluate play along both lines.
The next step is an integrated solution, something that is surely in the product pipeline for AI-video companies like Pixellot and its competitors (yes, this is a competitive market; numerous companies offer similar solutions aimed at different market segments).
After that, the final step will be the creation of new statistics. At present, Kaggle has regular competitions challenging enthusiasts to create new football metrics. I expect such competitions to kick into overdrive in the coming years as AI-driven video technologies are more widely adopted.
As far as an overall timeline, I expect everything described above to be mainstream within ten years.
Who knows, perhaps the first Hokie Heisman winner is a right guard preparing to enter middle school in the fall.