NFL unveils Big Data Bowl winners for this year's analytics competition focused on tackling

The NFL, in partnership with AWS, announced the results of the sixth annual Big Data Bowl, awarding first place to a team whose project was entitled, “Uncovering Missed Tackle Opportunities.” The winning group consisted of Matthew Chang, Katherine Dai, Daniel Jiang and Harvey Cheng, whose work experience includes stints at Apple, McKinsey, Meta and Intel. Using NFL Next Gen Stats tracking data, they created a new metric calculating tackle probability and evaluated players based on their tackle conversion rate.

The in-person presentations were made at the NFL Scouting Combine on Feb. 28. Each of the five finalist teams received $12,500 with the winning quartet earning an additional $12,500. NYU students Smit Bajaj and Viren Bhatia were the top finishers among those competing on the undergraduate track.