Decoding Defensive Coverage Responsibilities in American Football Using Factorized Attention Based Transformer Models
arXiv:2603.25901v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Defensive coverage schemes in the National Football League (NFL) represent complex tactical patterns requiring coordinated assignments among defenders who must react dynamically to the offense’s passing concept. This paper presents a factorized attention-based transformer model applied to NFL multi-agent play tracking data to predict individual coverage assignments, receiver-defender matchups, and the targeted defender on every pass play. Unlike previous approaches that focus on post-hoc coverage classification at the team level, our model enables […]