The question remains how the shift changes a team and the game. Gil Brandt, a former personnel executive for the Dallas Cowboys, points to one way the league is already different. With advanced statistics, he notes, teams are able to see trends and adjust in real time. It used to be that teams would look back at how often they ran a play and how much it gained. Now, do they want to know Cam Newton’s completion percentage when a defense rushes three? Or four? Or six or more? That information is available week to week, allowing teams to tailor game plans with far greater specificity.

Much of the work is also centered on figuring out some of the game’s most vexing problems — when to kick a field goal versus going for it on fourth down; what to do under the new overtime rules; when to challenge a call; when to use a timeout — amid the chaos of the sideline.

The Jacksonville Jaguars, who this year created a football technology and analytics group, have pondered all those questions. The coaching staff had expressed interest in having information about how to function under the league’s new overtime rules, which call for each team to get a possession unless the first team to get the ball scores a touchdown. But because the rule was so new, there were simply not enough comparable examples of game-time situations to produce a reliable model, said Tony Khan, the son of the Jaguars’ new owner, Shad Khan, and the head of the analytics group.

“Baseball is an easier sport to prove out some of these concepts, because there are less variables,” Tony Khan said. “You can isolate the defense behind them; it’s essentially a one-on-one matchup. And there are so many more plays in baseball that you can look at. If you want to look at every fourth down and five from that team’s own 36-yard line, there aren’t going to be all that many of those. And the 11-on-11 nature makes it harder to isolate credit for success and harder to isolate blame for mistakes. There is a reason why this caught on a lot sooner and developed a lot further in baseball than football.”

For most teams, though, the most intriguing application may come in player evaluation — projecting how college players will perform in the N.F.L. and figuring out how valuable one player compared with another. The Jaguars, for instance, analyzed how often the receiver Justin Blackmon was targeted in obvious passing situations at Oklahoma State before they drafted him. Before they signed Laurent Robinson as a free agent, the Jaguars knew how many of Tony Romo’s touchdown passes he caught on crossing routes with the Cowboys last season.

The Jaguars are also using data to monitor injuries and recovery, hoping to tailor players’ practice regimens to keep them healthier longer, but also another potential boon when contracts are negotiated.

“Ideally, you want the objective and subjective to match up,” said one general manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The N.F.L. is about resource allocation — you have a certain number of salary cap dollars and draft picks. If you found any area of the market that may be undervalued, you want to keep that information. At the end of the day, the tape is going to be our first choice. They have to look good on film.”