Data Science and Athletics Team To Tackle 2024 NFL Big Data Bowl

Ryan Larsen has coached hundreds of players during his football career - and four data scientists. When a team of students in the  Master of Science in Applied Data Science Program (MADS) at Carnegie Mellon University started a months-long project to parse the massive dataset released by the NFL for its premier, annual sports analytics competition, they called in the coach. The team's submission, a metric used to evaluate " setting the edge ," was one of two from Carnegie Mellon named a finalist in the 2024 NFL  Big Data Bowl. Formed by MADS student  Shane Hauck and under the guidance of alumnus and Assistant Teaching Professor  Ron Yurko of the  Department of Statistics & Data Science in the  Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences , the group of four entered the competition's coaching-centric track, which encourages teams to pair with actual coaches to develop insightful uses of NFL data. As finalists, the team was awarded $12,500 and an invitation to the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis at the end of February to present their work. Expert insight meets next-gen data . The students huddled up with Coach Larsen and his Defensive Coordinator Ben Gibboney to learn as much as they could about setting the edge, where a perimeter defender tries to contain the play by setting an edge that directs the ball carrier toward the center of the field.