National Football League Announces Finalists in Seventh Annual Big Data Bowl Powered by Amazon Web Services

The National Football League announced today the finalists in the seventh annual Big Data Bowl, the league’s crowd-sourcing competition for the sports analytics community aimed at challenging applicants to use Next Gen Stats (NGS) to generate insights to enhance the game. Each finalist received $12,500 for being selected.

Powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), this year’s competition highlighted data collected from what happens before the snap to produce insights and actionable predictions into what the offense or defense does after the snap. Additionally, Pro Football Focus (PFF) scouting data was included to help identify formations, wide receiver routes and blocking assignments. Using this data, each contestant was placed in one of three tracks: design a metric, coaching presentation and undergraduate students. More than 400 data scientists from around the world participated in this year’s event – a record high for the Big Data Bowl competition.

“Each year we see an incredible rise in participants as well as skill levels, reflecting a growing appetite to explore new aspects of football,” said Mike Lopez, senior director of football data and analytics at the NFL. “This year’s competition highlighted the increasing importance of pre-snap tendencies in scouting and play design, uncovering fascinating ways teams conceal their plays. The NFL continues to be inspired by the innovation and talent emerging from this competition and their impact on the future of the game.”

The 2025 Big Data Bowl will culminate with an in-person event at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis on Feb. 26. Each of the finalists will be competing for an additional $12,500 in prize money, and the event will feature a keynote discussion by Dr. Eric Tulsky, general manager of the Carolina Hurricanes. The finalists will also have an opportunity to meet and interact with an estimated 200 analytics staffers, coaches and front office personnel who will be in attendance.

Below are the seventh annual Big Data Bowl finalists, semi-finalists and honorable mention finishers, along with links to their submissions.

Coaching track:

Ben Wendel; https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/benwendel/wendel-big-data-bowl-2025

Undergraduate track:

Smit Bajaj, Vishakh Sandwar (New York University); https://www.kaggle.com/code/smitbajaj/exposing-coverage-tells-in-the-presnap

Lindsay Fleishman (University of Georgia), Daniel Soriano (University of California, Davis), Eric Steinberg (Emory University), Lucca Ferraz (Rice University); https://www.kaggle.com/code/ericthesteinberg/tendenciq

Metric track:

Ryan Brill, Cole Jacobson, Justin Lipitz, Jonathan Pipping; https://www.kaggle.com/code/colejacobson/safety-entropy

Sarah Pollack; https://www.kaggle.com/code/sarahpollack/under-cover-2-predicting-disguised-defenses

Semi-finalists - $5,000:

Andrew Akers; https://www.kaggle.com/code/andrewakers9/dialing-up-the-pressure

Jonah Lubin, Charles Wells (Rice University); https://www.kaggle.com/code/jonahdlubin/keep-em-separated

Quang Nguyen, Ron Yurko; https://www.kaggle.com/code/tindata/down-set-hut

Matt Polsky (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill); https://www.kaggle.com/code/mattpolsky/it-s-a-bluff-predicting-receiver-decoy-motions

Abhi Varadarajan (Carnegie Mellon University); https://www.kaggle.com/code/abhishekvaradarajan/trench-chess

Honorable Mentions:

Dan Bickelhaupt; https://www.kaggle.com/code/danbickelhaupt/read-em-weep

Miguel Duarte; https://www.kaggle.com/code/miguelmd123/disguised-intentions

Nick Gurol, Shaan Chanchani, Ben Wolbransky, Tim Bryan; https://www.kaggle.com/code/brochillington/camo-the-art-of-pre-snap-disguise

Luke Neuendorf; https://www.kaggle.com/code/lukeneuendorf/motion-for-more

Randy Short; https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/randallshort/frr-eaze-nfl-big-data-bowl-2025-randy-short

Guy Haiby, Roee Haiby (University of California, Santa Cruz); https://www.kaggle.com/code/guyhaiby/decoding-audibles-leveraging-pre-snap-signals

Rachael Kaplan (Duke University), Madalyn Elwood (Buena Vista University); https://www.kaggle.com/code/madalynelwood/motion-metrics-te-motion-impact-on-rushing-lanes

Shekhar Shah, Jack Sullivan (University of Wisconsin-Madison); https://www.kaggle.com/code/sshah30/cat-and-mouse-motion-vs-defensive-alignment

For more information on the Big Data Bowl, visit https://operations.nfl.com/the-game/big-databowl/.