NFL Turns To Amazon For Help Addressing Player Injuries (techrepublic.com) 39
After signing a pact with the Seattle Seahawks last week, Amazon Web Service announced a much larger deal with the NFL to use its technology to address concussions and other devastating injuries. From a report: AWS will provide artificial intelligence and machine learning tools to the NFL with the hope that eventually, the league will be able to predict the risk of player injuries, it announced on Thursday. Amazon Rekognition, Amazon ML Solutions Lab and Amazon SageMaker will be used by the NFL's data scientists, developers and doctors to develop a platform called "Digital Athlete." With "Digital Athlete," the league can create a simulated model of an NFL player and run it through an endless number of game scenarios to gain a better understanding of what situations lead to injury. The league's doctors will also use other data like equipment choice, playing surface, play type, environmental factors, aggregated and anonymized player injury information and player position to better understand how to treat or rehabilitate injuries.
Sometimes I wonder what is a buzzword (Score:3, Insightful)
It sounds like like AI and machine learning, and more like someone has joined together all the important tables and made a front-end for the doctors to choose whichever select fields and where clauses they want.
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Findings (Score:1)
It found that getting hit in the head can cause a concussion.
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Yep.
I could save them a lot of money: What causes injuries is going out onto a field and running into other people as hard as possible.
Get rid of the helmets (Score:2)
Go back to playing with a leather or somesuch head protection or none at all like Rugby.
Will that happen?
Very unlikely, and we will probably see a ridiculous flag football before they get rid of helmets.
Re: Get rid of the helmets (Score:1)
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How do you reckon helmet elimination will reduce CTE?
Genuinely curious...
The stronger the padding, the harder players will hit. If players aren't as well protected they won't hit as hard because it'll hurt them just as much as it will the other player. This would force players to change mechanics and play more safely.
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I guess you've never seen a Rugby match... plenty of concussions and broken noses to be had, and no head gear at all.
I've played rugby. I've played football as well. In football I've broken my foot, had a teammate in high school break his leg so bad he almost lost it, seen countless knee and shoulder injuries. I'll take a broken nose over a torn ACL any day. Hell, my sister broke her nose playing high school basketball.
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my sister broke her nose playing high school basketball.
That's the wrong kind of dribbling...
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How do you reckon helmet elimination will reduce CTE?
Genuinely curious...
The same reason that bare knuckle boxing is safer.
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Dude is completely correct!
The N.F.L.’s Incredible Shrinking Pads: The league is trying to make football safer. So why are its players wearing less padding? [nytimes.com]
The Dangers of Safety Equipment [nytimes.com]
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Dude is completely correct!
The N.F.L.’s Incredible Shrinking Pads: The league is trying to make football safer. So why are its players wearing less padding? [nytimes.com]
The Dangers of Safety Equipment [nytimes.com]
Also, reading that article about the pads, in college our skill players would cut down the knee pads to about the size of a deck of cards. And even for myself playing offensive line, I would only wear the hip and butt pads for games, not in practices. But that was more about comfort than anything else, and as a lineman you're really not going to get hit there too often (plus, as a lineman, let's just say I had some natural extra padding in those areas anyway).
Re:Get rid of the helmets (Score:4, Informative)
You want CTE to go away(or be drastically reduced), then get rid of the helmets.
Go back to playing with a leather or somesuch head protection or none at all like Rugby.
Will that happen?
Very unlikely, and we will probably see a ridiculous flag football before they get rid of helmets.
I was going to say, reduce the whole level of equipment. You'll have more injuries at first, but then people will adjust. Having played both football and rugby at a collegiate level (D2 football, club rugby) I can attest you are much less likely to be injured playing rugby, and that is a direct result of the collisions not being as strong. The stronger the padding, the harder football players hit.
I will also say that the rules have changed to specifically cause more injuries. The safest way to tackle someone is facemask in the chest, lift up, drive through, and take them to the ground. That would get a penalty for unnecessary roughness today. Players are forced to hit low which means more knee and leg injuries (or they have to try and arm tackle which means more missed tackles).
Also, while I never had a concussion, I would not be surprised to find that I have CTE to a small degree. I was an offensive lineman and repeatedly made contact on my forehead. I fully plan to make use of the NCAA CTE settlement for the medical testing, as at 33 years old and over 10 years removed from my playing days I do feel like I have some relatively minor memory problems. I don't regret playing the sport, however.
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How about helmets with crumple zones? Less jarring to the noggin, and it can also be used to make players more aware of the hits they make by giving visual proof that they need to work on tackling technique.
If you look, a lot of NFL players use the Riddell Speedflex [riddell.com]. The crown of the helmet actually appears to be somewhat flexible to act as something similar to a crumple zone, or at least lessen some of the impact.
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I have a feeling the "Protective Gear Industrial Complex" would not approve.
Look at how expensive it is to play hockey.
There is a whole industry devoted to gear, gear and even more gear, and they don't want something like player safety to get in the way of their revenue stream.
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As you know part of the reason that there are not as many injuries in rugby (I assume union?) is because there is no forward passing. Most tackles are made pretty close to the offside line rather than two guys running full speed at each other 30 yards downfield.
I can predict the outcome of the AI analysis (Score:5, Funny)
How about a nice game of chess?
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Result: Stop having 250+ lb men running into each other at high speed.
Rugby has large men running into each other at high speeds but doesn't have the injury rate of football. Ironically it's the high amount of padding a protection a football player wears that leads to the higher rate of injury because it promotes higher impact forces. Remove/reduce the padding and injury rates will drop.
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Really? I'll bet rugby players get injured more often than NFL players do.
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Really? I'll bet rugby players get injured more often than NFL players do.
They may get injured more often, but the injuries aren't as bad or long lasting.
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Not quite. Rugby has not only a well-known record of injuries, but moreso deaths caused by head traumas. It's been all over the news (in Europe) this year, as the number of fatalities or paralysing injuries (neck traumas mostly) keep rising.
Football players die as well, especially back in the earlier days of the sport(of course when they didn't wear helmets). When I was in middle school a player on our high school team died of heat related causes, which is one of the main causes of death in modern football (I would say unknown heart conditions and head trauma are the other main causes). The overall injury rate is still massively skewed towards football. The NFL had a headline story 2 years ago (almost to the day) of a player with major spin
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And I would argue the increasing injury rate of rugby is due to the increases in strength/size of modern athletes as exercise science improves every year. Every year the athletes are stronger and faster than the year before.
You are correct.
The average weight of college football players in the 1940s was something like 180 lbs.
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Rugby has large men running into each other at high speeds but doesn't have the injury rate of football.
It helps that in rugby you can only tackle the player with the ball. There's a lot less tackles in rugby.
That's not the whole reason though. Lack of armor means they tend to grab the other players around the waist and take them down, not just run into them as hard as possible.
Re:I can predict the outcome of the AI analysis (Score:5, Funny)
Further result: Most injuries occur on Sundays. Conclusion: Stop playing on Sundays.
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Oh Oh Easy fix!
Ban playing Monday-Sunday! Problem solved!
Wait just a few seconds while I put my helmet on for the inevitable thousands of flamebait clicks about to ensue.
I have a better solution: (Score:1)
Acually live your fucking life, and do shit that you consider worth it even if you die from it, instead of pussying out to your padded safe space like a true Millennial.
Cheers from Australia, the UK, etc.
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Acually live your fucking life, and do shit that you consider worth it even if you die from it, instead of pussying out to your padded safe space like a true Millennial.
Cheers from Australia, the UK, etc.
The next time you're in the US, go ahead and say that to some of the Millennial players in the NFL.
Looks more like a marketing agreement (Score:2)
Hey Alexa! (Score:2)
"He doesn't breathe, has no pulse and he swallowed his tongue."
Alexa: "I predict, he won't be able to return to the field before the end of the game."
A other pre existing conditions black list (Score:2)
A other pre existing conditions black list that can be used.
From the textbook of sociopath solutions. (Score:2)
Not a human solution, not a cultural solution, but "AI" and "big data"... are those types at the NFL even fucking humans? Or that creepy Zuckerberg / Jimmy Fallon / Tony Hayward acted personality uncanny valley type?
What? (Score:2)
AI snake oil in the cloud? (Score:2)