Amazon is revolutionizing the NFL viewing experience with its Prime Vision alternate broadcast on Thursday Night Football.
Prime Vision positions the camera behind the quarterback in a view that feels comfortable to those who grew up playing EA Sports’ Madden video game series. This view also shows receiver and defensive back matchups that are often omitted or not as visible in standard NFL broadcasts.
Prime Vision has continually added new features since its inception, such as “Defensive Alerts” that rely on historical game data from Next Gen Stats (NGS) and artificial intelligence to identify blitzing defenders before the play begins. This tool helps fans step into the quarterback’s shoes and better understand the defense’s approach as the play unfolds in real time.
Instead of field goal range line marker indicators on the field in late half situations, Amazon often displays multiple line markers that assign probabilities. The kicker might have a 50% chance if you make it to the 40-yard line but the odds increase to 75% if you cross the 30-yard line, for a rough example.
Former member of the Los Angeles Rams and now member of the Thursday Night Football broadcast team, Andrew Whitworth, played a significant role in developing another feature in Pocket Health according to The Athletic:
Former Rams offensive tackle Andrew Whitworth was an integral part of developing this model. He added pertinent information like the offensive line’s expectation for where the QB should be, which gets baked into the model. Schwartzstein said embracing and applying football expertise with tracking data is opening a world of possibilities with analytics. Models like Pocket Health and Defensive Alerts continue to get refined as they are fed more data directly from the field.
Here’s how Pocket Health is graded:
• Perfect pocket: 100-80 percent (green line).
• Stable pocket: 79-60 percent (lighter green line).
• Strained pocket: 59-40 percent (yellow line). Pocket can go either way, meaning a blocker may lose very soon, but still can recover.
• Weak pocket: 39-20 percent (orange line).
• Collapsing pocket: 19-0 percent (red line). One or more blockers have lost and the quarterback is in immediate danger. If the quarterback has not thrown the ball or scrambled at 0 percent, they are guaranteed to get hit or sacked. Even if a quarterback has thrown the ball at 0 percent pocket health, they are likely to get hit.
Do you utilize Prime Vision when watching Thursday night games on Amazon Prime Video? Should this approach be used for all NFL broadcasts moving forward?
Let us know how you feel in the comments.
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