Tackling Injuries With AI: The NFL's Jeff Miller

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Feb 4, 2025

Jeff Miller, the NFL's Executive VP overseeing player health and safety, shares his journey from Capitol Hill to football. He discusses how the NFL utilizes AI and advanced tech to analyze injuries and enhance safety equipment, innovating strategies to reduce concussions. Miller highlights partnerships with tech firms like AWS and the importance of data in refining game rules. He reveals intriguing findings about player behavior influenced by safer equipment and addresses the fine line between innovation and traditional gameplay safety.

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ANECDOTE

Data-Driven Safety

The NFL used computer vision and AI to analyze on-field injury data.
This data-driven approach led to rules changes and better equipment design, improving player safety.

INSIGHT

Position-Specific Injuries

Different player positions experience different injury patterns in football.
This necessitates position-specific equipment and tailored injury prevention strategies.

ANECDOTE

Training Camp Injuries

The NFL found that most injuries occurred during training camp due to high training loads.
By adjusting training camp schedules and implementing load management strategies, they reduced injuries.

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Jeff Miller moved from a career in government to focus on the health and safety of NFL players. Due to the nature of their sport, they are more prone to injuries, including concussions, than other professional athletes. By leveraging the game’s unique elements, such as the volume of cameras filming on-field activities, the NFL can gather large data sets to track injuries, and then segment their likelihood of occurrence by position and design equipment and update game rules to minimize them.

Jeff joins us to describe how the NFL has partnered with tech companies, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), to expand its technology fluency and implement these solutions. Listen to today’s episode to learn about specific equipment the NFL has produced and rule changes it has implemented to better track and protect its players, as well as one element of the game Jeff believes technology cannot replace. Read the episode transcript here.

Guest bio

Jeff Miller is the National Football League’s executive vice president overseeing player health and safety. He is also the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs, and policy. During his tenure, the league has used data, artificial intelligence, and engineering to improve protective equipment, make rule changes, and support independent medical research related to players’ wellness and the rate of concussions.

Before joining the league, Miller spent a decade on Capitol Hill as chief counsel and staff director for the Antitrust and Business Competition Subcommittee of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Chicago Law School and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

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