SportsBall

In football, no position is harder to evaluate than a defensive back 🏈 An NFL team runs about 60 plays a game, half of them passes. Yet the average cornerback is only targeted 4–5 times. Across a season, that’s fewer than 100 measurable plays, out of more than a thousand. Positions like quarterbacks and running backs live in a stat-rich world, but corners are judged mostly by rare interceptions or breakups. Their best plays are often the ones quarterbacks never throw toward. That’s why NFL Next Gen Stats and Amazon Web Services (AWS) created Coverage Responsibility. Using tracking chips and machine learning, the stat identifies who was responsible for covering a receiver at every 0.1 second interval, making the invisible work of the position visible. 🚫 You can now better quantify shutdown corners, where Pat Surtain II leads the league with the lowest target rate in man coverage (12.2%), while also taking on WR1s more than a third of the time. 👯 Or track the stickiest defenders like Trent McDuffie, who tops the league with over six minutes in tight coverage less than 1 yard from the receiver, compared to a league average just over three. 2️⃣ You can also flip to the other side of the ball and identify the most smothered receivers like Ja’Marr Chase, who has been doubled-covered 36 times since the start of last season, most in the NFL. Coverage Responsibility started as an idea in the NFL Big Data Bowl. Now it’s part of the official Next Gen Stats arsenal, designed not to overwhelm fans with numbers, but to explain the game in clearer ways. Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualizations 📊

Some of the greatest comebacks in sports: ⛳️ Tiger Woods 🥊 Muhammad Ali 🏈 Peyton Manning Now you can add Marc Márquez to that list because after years of crashes, surgeries, and setbacks, Márquez has reclaimed the MotoGP world title 🏆 For those new to it, MotoGP™ is the fastest motorcycles in the world, racing on legendary tracks at speeds that make car racing look tame. These bikes actually go faster than F1 on the straights, topping 360 km/h (227 mph). In the corners, riders lean more than 60 degrees, scraping knees and elbows across the track, with tires so sticky they cling to the asphalt like warm bubblegum. But even with that grip, the limits are pushed too far. Crashes are constant and Marc suffered 24 last season alone. His story is one of resilience: six championships by 2019, then a shattered arm in 2020, three surgeries, double vision in 2021, and nearly 50 more crashes after a fourth surgery in 2022. This season, everything clicked. Eleven Grand Prix wins, 14 sprint wins, and seven weekends where he swept them both. By midseason, his points total began breaking away from the field, leaving even his younger brother Álex in second place far behind 💨 And this weekend, the comeback was complete. From broken bones and blurred vision to world champion again, Marc Márquez has etched his name into the history books as one of the greatest comeback stories in sports. Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualizations 📊

Every two years, golf’s greatest rivalry reignites, not between individuals, but between nations ⛳️🇺🇸🇪🇺 This weekend, Scottie Scheffler leads Team USA against Rory McIlroy and Europe on the unforgiving fairways of Bethpage Black in New York. The Ryder Cup looks very different from a regular tournament. Each side fields 12 players and a captain, six qualify automatically, while six are captain’s picks then instead of one leaderboard, the Cup is decided through 28 head-to-head matches: Friday/Saturday: teams of 2 play in foursomes (alternate shot) and four-ball Sunday: 12 one-on-one singles Every match is worth one point, and 14 wins the Cup. Since 1927, the U.S. leads the rivalry 27–15, but Europe has won 10 of the last 14. What makes that striking is that, on paper, the U.S. almost always brings the stronger team. This year, Nike athlete Scottie Scheffler once again anchors the Americans, the World No. 1 with two majors, six wins, and 17 top-10 finishes in 2025. Europe is led by Nike athlete Rory McIlroy, who completed his career Grand Slam with a Masters victory, alongside wins at Pebble Beach and The Players. The Ryder Cup is golf’s ultimate showdown and Bethpage Black is the ultimate test. Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualizations 📊

⚾️🤖 Starting in 2026, MLB will introduce robo umpires, not to replace humans, but to back them up with an automated strike zone and a new challenge system. For more than a century, the strike zone has been a moving target: shoulders-to-knees in the 1800s, armpits-to-knees in the ’60s, and today defined from the midpoint of the torso down to just below the kneecap. Not exactly simple to call with consistency. UmpScorecards data shows MLB umpires get about 94% of calls right, but that still means nine misses per game. The ABS system, with 12 high-speed cameras in every ballpark, tracks pitches within 2.5 millimeters (about the width of a grain of rice). Players will now get two challenges per game, keeping them if successful. In spring training tests, teams averaged 4.1 challenges per game, overturning about half of them. That’s roughly two corrected calls every night, the kind of misses that can decide innings. 📊 Players liked it. Fans liked it. And Major League Baseball (MLB) is betting it’s the next successful rule change to modernize the game. Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualizations 📊

Fifty years ago, field goals were shaky at best. Accuracy sat under 60%, and anything over 50 yards was seen as a desperation move. Fast forward to today: 🎯 League-wide accuracy is over 85%. 🎯 Short kicks clear 90%. 🎯 Even 50-yarders now go in at nearly 70% The position has gone from unreliable to indispensable. Where a 50-yarder once felt like desperation, today it’s part of the game plan. Coaches design around it, and players like Brandon Aubrey and Chris Boswell are turning long-range kicks into a reliable source of points. Data from Pro Football Reference and Pro Football Focus Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualization 📊

The Alcaraz/Sinner rivalry has quickly become one of the best in all of sports 🇪🇸🇮🇹🎾 Over the course of 15 matches and 3,152 points, Carlos has won just 6 more points than Jannik, less than a 0.2% difference. With a win yesterday at the US Open, Alcaraz now has six grand slams compared to Sinner’s four, and leads the head-to-head battle 10-5. Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualizations 📊

How can a sailboat go faster than the wind that powers it? 💨⛵️ That’s the question behind SailGP F50s, 50-foot foiling catamarans that are less like leisure sailboats and more like flying racecars on water. The secret is twofold: 1️⃣ Hydraulic wingsails Unlike traditional fabric sails, the F50’s rigid carbon-fiber wings are powered by hydraulics. The crew can adjust their camber and twist in real time, shaping airflow with the precision of an aircraft wing. 2️⃣ Titanium T-foils Underwater, the boat rides on wing-shaped foils. Water is ~800 times denser than air, so lifting the hulls clear of the surface significantly cuts drag. At the same time, the foils generate lift in the opposite direction of the wing, creating a push-pull effect that drives the boat forward The result? Speeds over 103 km/h (64 mph), pulling up to 3 G’s in turns. Faster than a marlin, almost double an orca whale, and all powered by just the wind. But the tech is only part of the story. Keeping the boat flying above the water takes a six-person crew: a driver, a wing trimmer, a flight controller, two grinders, and a strategist. And unlike traditional sailing, SailGP brings this spectacle right to the fans. Short races, identical boats, national rivalries, and iconic venues like Rio, New York, and Lake Geneva. Stadium seating packed with thousands of people watching sailboats fly just offshore. Follow SportsBall for more sports data visualizations 📊

With college and pro football kicking off, let’s talk about how NFL games actually show up on your TV 📺🏈 The NFL plays just 272 regular season games per year, compared to 2,400+ in MLB or 1,200+ in the NBA, but it draws the largest fanbase in the country with over 223 million fans. That limited supply creates massive demand, and the way these games are distributed reflects that. Here’s how it breaks down: 🔷 87% of all NFL games are available on free broadcast TV, through networks like CBS, FOX, NBC, and ABC 🔷 97% of Sunday games are broadcast on regional or national TV 🔷 Cable networks like ESPN and NFL Network carry a smaller batch at 6% of all games, mostly from Monday Night Football 🔷 Streaming accounts for 20 total games - or 7% - across Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube, but even those are available for free in the home markets of the teams playing 🔷 Regardless of how an NFL game is distributed, if your local team is playing, the game will be shown by a local broadcast television station in your home market for free, so you can watch your home team every single week For as long as the league has existed, the National Football League (NFL) has stuck with a fan-first distribution strategy, maximizing reach, not restricting access. It’s one of the main reasons NFL games make up nearly 90% of the top 100 most-watched broadcasts in America every year.