Injuries are an inevitable part of the NFL with all the high-speed collisions, crushing hits and high exertion necessary on every play.Success each season often comes down to which teams can be the healthiest at the end and a string of injuries has already hampered preseason contenders like Baltimore, San Francisco and Cincinnati.With teams investing hundreds of millions of dollars every season into their rosters, keeping those players available to play is crucial and any small edge has the potential to lead to better results on the field. To help achieve that, the NFL has turned to technology in recent years, partnering with Amazon Web Services on an injury prediction tool that uses data and artificial intelligence to help teams manage the health of their players. “Fans want their favorite players on the field. The team owners certainly want those players on the field. The athletes themselves want to be on the field,” said Julie Souza, the global head of sports at AWS. “Anything we can do to improve that and keep players healthy, that’s sort of a noble endeavor.”The Digital Athlete tool takes video and data from players on all 32 teams from training, practice and games, giving every team information on how hard its players have worked, whether they are at risk for more injuries, as well as helping them track leaguewide trends and benchmarks.This is the third season all teams have had access to the Digital Athlete portal and medical staff say it has been extremely beneficial, calling it a “one-stop shop” for information that previously was never available at one source. “Basically, it’s giving you more information to ask yourself better questions to then make better interventions to make your process more efficient,” said Tyler Williams, the vice president of health and performance for the Minnesota Vikings. “At the end of the day, if you sum sports science into one sentence: How can we measure and assess to make ourselves more effective and efficient.”Digital Athlete uses sensors i …
