We've recently added a few cool features to the Team Game Finder that we wanted to update everyone on.

The first addition was inspired by the slew of return TDs scored by the Eagles in the first 5 weeks of this season. It sure seemed extreme, but we had no way of placing it into perspective via the Play Index. Well, now we do. We've added a function to search for all Return TDs (any TD that is not passing or rushing). It turns out, the Eagles are the only team since 1940 to score 7+ Return TDs in their first 5 games. The 1998 Seahawks had 13 such scores, the most in a season since 1940.

We have also added penalty & penalty yards data to the game finder. I'm sure our users won't be shocked to discover that the Raiders have 6 of the 8 most penalized teams since the merger. And the 1998 49ers had the most penalties by any team in a win since the merger, with 22 at Buffalo. Our penalty data is mostly complete back to 1950, but we'd recommend restricting searches to post-merger for the best accuracy.

Since we've launched the various Play Index tools on our sites, we've struggled with the best way to monetize what we feel is the deepest and most powerful set of sports data tools anywhere. We know they are useful, our users, the teams, broadcast networks, and newspaper reporters tell us so.

On baseball, we charge an annual fee of $36, but our best guess is that the traffic and audience of the other sites would not be sufficient to make a subscription model worth our while. We have been running traditional banner ads on those pages, but they pay so little and the play index content is niche content (valuable, but niche content) so the traffic will never rise that high on the play index pages. So we have decided to remove all banner advertising and instead run Google consumer surveys on the non-baseball play index pages.

Here's how it works. The first time you run a report each day your results will be obscured and you will be asked to answer a 1-5 question survey. After you answer the survey, your requested report will be shown to you and you won't see another survey for that site on that browser for 24 hours (multi-question surveys are good for 48 hours). These surveys pay us around 5 cents per survey which, while it doesn't sound like much, is about 15 times what we would get from banner ads on those pages. Here is an FAQ if you are wondering how Google uses this information.

Also, if you find these gateway surveys a step too far, consider subscribing to our Ad-Free Access. Starting at $20/year you can surf every Sports Reference page ad and survey free.

If you are wondering what our play index tools are, give them a try. We think you'll enjoy them.
Play Index at Basketball-Reference.com
Play Index at Pro-Football-Reference.com
Play Index at Hockey-Reference.com
Play Index at Sports-Reference.com/cbb
Play Index at Sports-Reference.com/cfb

Just a quick announcement that the 2014 season has been added as an option to our Neutralized Stats tables. As a reminder, these tables can be found by clicking on "More Stats" on player pages and then scrolling down to the neutralized section.

This feature allows us to compare players across eras. For instance, the image below shows how each of Pedro Martinez's seasons would have looked if pitching in the environment of the 2014 Dodgers:

The same adjustments can be applied to batting numbers, as well. For instance, check out Mike Trout's statistics translated to the batting environment of the 2000 Rockies:

Earlier this week we introduced new advanced search options into our shooting splits tool.

In case you didn't know before, we have detailed shooting data for every player since 2000-01, and detailed splits are available by going to a player's page and hovering your mouse cursor over 'Shooting':

Now, you can click on the [+] next to 'show advanced options' and you'll see two new advanced tools.

On the left, type in a player's name and click the search result to add it. In most cases, it will automatically populate as 'As teammate' or 'As opponent'. This will show shooting splits for whoever's page you are on, with the selected player both on and off the court.

In fact, you can even add several players and select custom combinations of 'On' and 'Off'.

Check out how LeBron fared versus Kawhi Leonard in 2013-14 by adding Leonard's name, then clicking on 'Go to Page'.

You can check out the numbers for just the Finals by clicking on the 'Playoffs' link in the results (likewise, you can add any split to your query the same way).

Why did Ruben Patterson call himself "Kobe Stopper". It might be these 2001-2002 numbers when Kobe went 18-63 with Patterson on the court, then 46-96 with him off:

ALSO! The tool on the right lets you compare the player whose page you are on versus any other player, or any other season. It works the same way, that is, begin typing the name in the form and then click a season from the select box that appears.

Then click 'Go to Page' and you'll get a side-by-side comparison of that player's shooting splits versus his own or another player's, in whichever season you selected:

Not a big thing, but we now have birth country flags on the 40-man and historical roster pages.

Example here: 2014 Kansas City Royals Roster (40-man) | Baseball-Reference.com.

Just wanted to post a quick blurb that we have made a few recent additions to the Team Streak Finder:

• Interceptions Returned for TD (last team with 4-game streak: dominant 2002 Buccaneers defense)
• Safeties (No team since the merger has had one in 3 straight games)
• Point Spread (Greatest Show on Turf was favored in 50 straight games)
• Interceptions Returned for TD by Opponent (The 2013 Texans are the only team since the merger to throw a pick-6 in 5 straight games)
• Safeties by Opponent (The 1980 Seahawks are the last team to be tackled in their own end zone in 3 straight games)

Hey @pfref, where does winning after a 25-point deficit rank in terms of #Browns all-time come-from-behind wins?

— Dusty Sloan (@TheDustySloan) October 5, 2014

This question about the Browns' comeback from a 25 point deficit yesterday inspired me to build a set of pages for the greatest comebacks for each NFL team plus a list of each team's comeback victories. You can see there that the Browns' win was their biggest comeback of all time and tied for the third biggest deficit ever overcome to win a game.

EDIT: I realized I could turn this around and do the greatest blown leads for each NFL team, too. So take heart, Titans fans - that wasn't the worst blown lead in franchise history (that.. doesn't make you feel much better, does it?)