The Philadelphia Eagles have found a formula for success that clearly works for them following their dominant win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIV earlier this year.
From ownership all the way down to the practice squad, everyone in this organization knows their role and the overall benefits of performing those duties to the best of their respective abilities. For these reasons, it is worth noting when Eagles GM Howie Roseman goes out and makes an addition to the front office that is anything but a traditional football guy.
According to ESPN Sports Analytics writer Seth Walder, Philadelphia has added Smit Bajaj to the front office as a quantitative analyst, and he will officially begin his work in this role in July.
The Eagles are hiring Smit Bajaj as a quantitative analyst, per source. He'll start with the team in July.
— Seth Walder (@SethWalder) May 2, 2025
Bajaj was part of the winning Big Data Bowl team this year for this project: https://t.co/zGwy3oeSES
The model that Bajaj helped build will not only help the Eagles predict what sort of coverage their offensive attack will be facing, but also does so with a staggering success rate of 89% pre-snap and 91% in the immediate first second after the snap.
Excited to share our (w/ @VishakhS74) entry to the '25 #BigDataBowl!
— Smit (@SBajajSports) January 6, 2025
We built a Transformer-based model predicting man/zone coverage in the presnap... peaking at 89% accuracy before the snap— and 93% 1sec after the snap
(More below!) pic.twitter.com/rWInHJNM9i
With weapons like AJ Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Saquon Barkley available, these are the types of adjustments that can set the elite teams within the league up for success by putting their already talented stars in positions to be successful.
If Philadelphia is able to provide Jalen Hurts with even an iota of additional information regarding the type of defensive pressure that he will be up against, then this Eagles offense will only become more difficult for opposing defenses to contain.
The defending champions are going to continue to do things their own way, and there is little reason to blame them for doing so when the results are as positive as what Philadelphia fans have grown accustomed to seeing under the current regime. One thing seems certain: the Eagles will always be looking for an edge on the opposition, and Bajaj is here to help that effort.