49ers/Vikings Recap & Interview with Amazon Prime Analytics Expert Sam Schwartzstein

·1 hr 24 min·5 clips

Peter King previews a 29-minute interview with Amazon's Sam Schwartzstein on how AI predicts blitzes in real-time for viewers.

The episode opens with Peter King and co-host Miles Simmons setting the stage for a mid-season NFL discussion. They immediately dive into the Monday night game where the Vikings defeated the 49ers, attributing the upset to Kevin O'Connell's scheme outmatching Steve Wilks and key 49ers injuries to Deebo Samuel and Trent Williams. King argues the 49ers are the NFC's best team when fully healthy but notes their physical style makes injuries a constant risk. The conversation shifts to a broader NFL trend: the volatility of team performance, with examples like Miami, Buffalo, and Detroit having dominant wins followed by heavy losses. King presents a detailed critique of drafting kickers high, listing five kickers selected in the first four rounds over 15 years—Alex Henery, Roberto Aguayo, Cade York, Chad Ryland, and Jake Moody—and contrasting them with successful undrafted kickers like Justin Tucker. The interview with Amazon Prime's Sam Schwartzstein forms the episode's centerpiece. Schwartzstein explains his role in developing 'Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats,' an alternate broadcast that uses AI to predict blitzing defenders. He reveals the machine learning model was built by a team in Tel Aviv, ingesting data from RFID tracking chips in players' shoulder pads and thousands of plays to highlight potential blitzers with red circles pre-snap. A key example is Jaguars slot corner Trey Herndon, who had blitzed only 12 times all season but was correctly highlighted by the AI before sacking Derek Carr. Schwartzstein discusses the challenges of teaching football basics to the Tel Aviv team and the goal of making fans smarter without revealing the model's exact rules. Post-interview, King and Simmons ponder the implications, including competitive balance concerns and whether this technology represents the future of broadcasts. The episode concludes with mid-season team assessments: King picks the Rams and Seahawks as risers, while Simmons chooses the Bengals and Texans. They briefly speculate on potential trade deadline moves involving Derrick Henry or DeAndre Hopkins before King closes with a lighthearted note from his column about a celebrity fantasy football league.

As heard by us

A midseason NFL check-in finds its sharpest angle in the technology behind live blitz prediction.

The Peter King Podcast uses a midseason NFL check-in to argue that the season still has not shown much of its true shape. Peter King and Miles Simmons work through the Chiefs' 6-1 start and the wider uncertainty around the league before the episode turns toward artificial…

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Why you'd press play

You get midseason NFL uncertainty, a 6-1 Chiefs reality check, and a look inside football's blitz-prediction machinery.

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