Project outline

• Developed a new metric (PURSUIT: Proportional Voronoi area Reducing Shielding Upfield Ideal angle Tackler) to analyze the holistic process of a tackle using tracking data.

• Analyzed the process of a tackle in three key components:

  • Reduction in effective area around the ball carrier 

  • Keeping between the ball and the endzone 

  • Taking an ideal angle to where the ball carrier is headed

• With the composite score created from these three metrics, an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of a tackler can be derived.

Project Summary

• Used a combination of methods including Voronoi Tesselations, Bivariate Normal Distributions, and Trigonometry to create a composite metric PURSUIT.

• Validated these metrics using a multitude of methods including Correlation, Feature Importance, and Meta Analytics to show solid stability and importance of the component metrics. 

• Analysis of the position groups' distributions of PURSUIT values to show differing trends for Linebackers.