NFL NextGen Stats turns focus to special teams returns

Returning a kick or punt for a touchdown has never been rarer in the NFL with one coming on average every 30 games.

So when there's a moment like there was Sunday when Nyheim Hines electrified the crowd in Buffalo with not one but two kickoff return scores in the same game, figuring out how it happened becomes a key question.

The NFL NextGen Stats group has teamed up with machine learning engineers from Amazon Web Services to develop the first advanced stats model focused on kick and punt returns to quantify it in a new statistic set to be officially released to the public Thursday.

Building on the work the NFL has done with AWS with player-tracking data to quantify statistics like completion percentage over expectation, rushing yards over expectation, yards after catch over expectation and defensive coverage classification, it now is doing the same on returns.

“When we talk about what’s missing from the special teams game, it’s really all of the other pieces of special teams that impact the field position game, which more or less impacts the strategy of the game tremendously,” said Mike Band, the senior manager for NFL Next Gen Stats Research & Analytics. “We feel that expected return yards is one of those areas that can shore up that missing piece."

By tracking the location, speed and acceleration of all the players at the moment a returner fields the ball through player tracking data gathered by chips in the players' pads and comparing it to historical data from the previous four seasons, the model is then able to estimate the probability distribution of how many yards a returner could be expected to gain.

From there, the NextGen Stats group can measure stats like how many yards over expectation a player gets on each return, how often they are successful, how...