The event is an analytics contest that explores statistical innovation in American football and was held in parallel with the league's scouting combine in Indianapolis.

Hassan Inayali, Aaron White, and Daniel Hocevar were triumphant as they fended off challenges from 300 other teams from around the world.

They were able to develop a new way to measure a key part of the sport - putting pressure on the opposing team's quarterback.

Currently it is measured by stats like sacks, hits, and hurries but the students found a new way to assess this.

"Those outcomes are measured at the end of the play and they don't really speak to how, for example, pressure evolves over the duration of the play," Inayatali said, as reported by CBC.

"So what we wanted to do was essentially develop a metric that provides continuity in the sense that you can tell what the pressure is on a quarterback at every frame of the play.

"There's still pressure when a defender is four yards away.

"So what we wanted to do is essentially quantify that so that teams could have a better sense of what's going on over the duration of the play rather than just the results of the play itself."

The NFL provided the contestants with player tracking data from games played during the first eight weeks of the 2021 season.

The winners used 4,911 plays as the basis for their analysis.

A key factor for their victory was the focus on interpretability, with a colourful graphics scheme clearly demonstrating how quarterback pressure evolves over the course of a play.

Their analysis could change the way some positions are viewed in the sport.

"One of the interesting things we found is that there are a lot of players, especially defensive linemen, that traditional metrics don't value very much," Hocevar said, as reported by CBC.

"But when you look at everything they're doing throughout the course of the whole play, it becomes very evident that they're really good players and contributed a lot to their team."