It’s very difficult to separate the impact of an NFL running back from his offensive line. There is only so much a running back can do if his guys fail to open holes, and just about any back can be effective if the line is good enough. It is perhaps the very first chicken and egg problem in football.

But sports nerds love a good problem, and in the 2020 Big Data Bowl the NFL asked sports nerds everywhere to figure out just what makes a good running play, who is responsible, who isn’t, and what we can tell about running backs versus their lines, all for a share of a cool $75,000. The NFL also gets a bunch of top-of-the-line research for $75,000, which is, in NFL terms, the juice one can extract from squeezing diddly squat.

The 2020 Big Data Bowl was a revelation. Harvard’s Mike Ploenzke,

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