Colton Schmidt of the Bills punts the ball against the Bears at New Era Field on Nov. 4, 2018. (Photo by Brett Carlsen/Getty Images)
As part of its annual 1st & Future entrepreneurial challenge, the NFL is soliciting ideas to improve player safety on punts in a new Punt Analytics Competition. The league has made available a proprietary data set including the 2016 and 2017 Next Gen Stats gleaned from Zebra Technologies’ RFID player tracking chips to help inform submissions.
The NFL revamped its kickoff rules before the current season and now is turning its attention to punts.