Ever wondered which running back has the most rushing yards in a game without a touchdown in the past few years? Or how your favorite young quarterbacks compare in their early careers? These questions traditionally require tedious data processing and coding, but you can now answer them easily for free using Blitz!

In the past few months, chatbots that allow users to “talk to” their documents have taken the AI world by storm, revolutionizing the way we interact with textual data and making it an engaging, interactive experience. Blitz, Brilliantly’s AI-powered football chatbot powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, takes this concept in an exciting new direction and is unique in allowing you to talk to numerical datasets – nflfastR and sportsdataverse NFL. In doing so, Blitz brings sports analytics to life, transforming it from a coding-intensive task into a conversational adventure. Blitz is a must-try for football fans who want quick, easy access to statistical insights without writing a single line of code.

Scope

Blitz currently knows about games going back to 1999, draft data going back to 1980, and combine data going back to 2000. It’s missing schedule information from 2022 and certain stats like passer rating. Although it can be a bit slow, particularly for complex queries, the results are worth the wait.

Data

A non-comprehensive list of stats available to Blitz through nflfastR and sportsdataverse.

• Receptions, targets, receiving yards/TDs, receiving EPA, air yards, yards after catch
• Carries, rushing yards, rushing yards/TDs, rushing EPA, fumbles lost
• Fantasy points (standard/PPR)
• Made/missed/blocked field goals and extra points, field goals made by distance
• Roof types and field surfaces for NFL games, coaches, betting spreads and totals
• Hall of fame membership, career weighted approximate value
• Height, weight, draft age, 40 yard dash, bench press, broad jump, cone, shuttle, draft year, draft pick, position, college

Examples

These questions are available as cached examples on Blitz:

• Create a scatterplot of the relationship between the number of targets per season and receiving yards per season for wide receivers in the past 5 seasons. Color the points by the player's height.
• What are the quartiles for cone time among edge defenders? At what percentile does 6.85 rank?
• Who are the lightest quarterbacks to be drafted in the first round?
• Make a table of the number of Seahawks first round draft picks by position.
• Which teams have the most wins since Patrick Mahomes' first start?
• Graph Tyreek Hill's YAC per game in 2019.
• Make a graph showing the average weight of a 1000-yard wide receiver each year from 2013-2022.

We can ask some more draft-specific questions:

• Which team drafted the most wide receivers in the first 100 picks since 2010? Who are they?

• Which first round quarterbacks have had the most career success since 1998?

• Who are the lightest first round quarterbacks?

We can also investigate combine stats. This example serves to demonstrates one of our favorite features of Blitz: follow-up questions.

Try Blitz

You can play around with Blitz here. Share your fun finds and feedback on Twitter and be sure to tag us @BriliantlyAI / @SuvanshSanjeev!

Blitz aims to increase the accessibility of NFL statistical queries and visualizations, and Brilliantly is considering expanding its scope to other sports like NBA, MLB, or NHL in the future to cater to a broader audience of sports enthusiasts. If you're interested in this possible future roadmap, be sure to let us know what you’re looking for and stay tuned for updates!