When Patriots kicker Stephen Gostkowski split the uprights on a 48-yard field goal in the first quarter against the Chiefs on Sunday night, the kick seemed unremarkable enough. But after a commercial break and the ensuing kickoff, NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast debuted a new feature, SNF Kicks, that tracked the trajectory with a TrackMan radar and told a deeper story.
This Gostkowski kick left his foot at 74 miles per hour, reached an apex of 44 feet above the turf, and would have been good from 57 yards.
“We’re at the very beginning but here, I do think there is value in this technology or we wouldn’t have invested in it,” said NBC executive producer Fred Gaudelli.
This is why SNF is the best. They're not content with the old deal of just guessing how far the kick would be good from. They're putting numbers to it and working it out for you. pic.twitter.com/46Ld9DJqaH
— Sam Monson (@PFF_Sam) October 15, 2018
TrackMan powers ball movement data in both MLB’s Statcast system and in pro golf coverage. A tracer line will soon be added to NBC’s coverage similar to the graphics used in golf. While speed and apex are relatively straightforward metrics, the third requires additional computation. The kick’s final distance traveled and its full trajectory—such as whether the ball is hooking or slicing—need to be accounted for.
In fact, the “good from” metric is what convinced Gaudelli to incorporate the data for the first time during Sunday night’s Week 6 Chiefs-Patriots game. NBC had been testing the system behind the scenes since the last preseason game in late August, making the game in Foxborough the seventh such test. During warmups, Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker kicked a 56-yarder that hit the cross bar and then went through—in other words, he had kicked the bare minimum distance.
“When the data spit back out, it said ‘good from 56 yards,’” Gaudelli said. “That really gave me some great confidence.”
There are plans to broaden the use of TrackMan in NBC’s football broadcasts. For now, its use will be restricted to replays, although tracking live plays is possible. Gaudelli said he’d like to see it used on punts and kickoffs and to generate other relevant data points. In future years, the hope is that TrackMan will also tabulate those metrics for passes, perhaps including spin rate and other statistical attributes. (Zebra’s embedded ball sensors are said to track much of this data, but Gaudelli said his broadcast does not have access to that information.)
As more kicks are recorded and the sample size grows, NBC will be able to offer objective measures on optimal kicks. Does a certain speed work better in varying wind directions or colder weather? The way some passers are known for having a cannon arm, Gaudelli said, we’ll learn who has a cannon leg. And subjective observations will soon have data to support them (or not).
“Especially on longer kicks that really go through with ease, people always wonder how long that would have been good from or you hear the announcer say, ‘That would have been good from 60, or that would have been good from 65,’” Gaudelli said. “Now you have a way to really tell someone.”