In the world of professional sports, “data-driven” is often a term tossed around to describe basic box scores. But for the National Football League, the last 10 years have represented a fundamental shift in how the game is measured, analyzed and even played. This week, as the league reflects on a decade of its Next Gen Stats or NGS platform, the story isn’t just about football — it’s an excellent example of how cloud-native infrastructure and machine learning can transform an industry in real time.