Mapping Tom Brady's Brain

It is incredibly difficult to judge individual talent in the NFL, because so much of a player's ability to succeed is based on context: his teammates and the system in which he operates. But the need to isolate performance is huge. Those who gain a reliable method will have a huge advantage. So where do you start? You start with the most valuable position on the field, the quarterback. Then, you isolate further on what appears to be the greatest differentiator between elite level quarterbacks: their minds. The ultimate goal: to understand how a quarterback processes information and to track the patterns their minds tend to follow. Or said another way: to map Tom Brady's brain. This is the quest of ESPN's Bryan Burke, who will be presenting this research on deep learning and quarterback decision-making at the 2019 Sloan Sports Analytics conference next week. He joined us for a preview of his work.