Basketball-Reference has edited its box score for the Western Division Round Robin Playoff game between the Rochester Royals and Fort Wayne Pistons on March 21, 1954. In addition to adding newly discovered assists for all players in the game, we have edited our previous total of seven assists for Cal Christensen to 10 assists, giving him a 'new' triple-double. We'll explain what we mean by that a bit below. Read the rest of this entry

Thanks to some superb sleuthing by the SABR Biographical Research Committee we have moved eight plate appearances (as well as the associated fielding statistics) with the 1882 Philadelphia Athletics from one John Farrell to another (sort of).

Here's the explanation from SABR's Bill Carle:

Our Find of the Month concerns a couple of guys named Farrell who played back in the 1870s and 1880s. I had listed John Farrell (known as Hartford Jack) playing in 1874 with Hartford. There was also a player listed as John Farrell (sometimes known as Bill) who played in the American Association with Philadelphia in 1882 and Baltimore in 1883. Justin McKinney did some research on these players and concluded that the 1882 Philadelphia AA record should belong to Hartford Jack.

Notes from 1879 and 1880 show that the Hartford man was playing shortstop and catcher for Sacramento and San Francisco. When Farrell signed with Philadelphia in 1882, a note in the Philadelphia City Item said that Philadelphia had signed John Farrell of San Francisco as change catcher. It seems reasonable to assume that this is the same man who had previously played in Hartford.

That leaves the Farrell who played for Baltimore in 1883. The Baltimore paper just identified him as Farrell of Philadelphia, the new man. There was nothing to really identify him. He could also be Hartford Jack, but there is nothing to really prove that. So we will list him as Farrell, first name unknown, until we can get further clarification as to his identity.

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Last month we added updated coverage of Negro major leagues from Seamheads to Baseball Reference. A summary of those additions can be found here. We have recently added some other new data from Seamheads featuring competitions from outside of the seven established major Negro Leagues, which we will highlight below.

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---UPDATED TO ACCOUNT FOR FULLER DATA SINCE 1990-91 ON 3/15/23---

While the NBA has only had a Defensive Player of the Year Award since 1982-83, it has named NBA All-Defensive teams since 1968-69. The All-Defensive teams allow fans to know which defenders were held in the highest regard, but don't necessarily tell us who was considered the best defender in a given season. Thanks to the research of Josh Elias and Sumitro Datta, we have added voting for the full history of the NBA All-Defensive teams, which allows us to get closer to answering that question.

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Basketball Reference has added NBA Coach of the Year voting back to 1995-96 thanks to work of Noureddine Hourani, a researcher who passed this information along to us.

This new information can be found on coach pages such as Phil Jackson and Monty Williams. Additionally, if you visit our page with the full history of the NBA Coach of the Year Award, you will see a 'v' link in the rows for years where we have voting. Those links will lead to a page with voting summaries for all of the awards for which we have data for that season. For instance, here's the 1995-96 NBA Award voting summary.

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Thanks to the research of Pete Palmer and Ken Pullis, Pro Football Reference has added player statistics (passing, rushing, receiving, defensive interceptions, kicking, punting and kick/punt returns) to every box score in AAFC history. This means we now have, for instance, complete passing logs for Hall of Famer Otto Graham, rushing logs for Hall of Famer Marion Motley, receiving logs for Hall of Famer Mac Speedie, kick/punt return logs for Chet Mutryn,  kicking logs for Hall of Famer Lou Groza, and the whole nine yards from Spec Sanders, who passed, ran, received, returned, punted AND intercepted during his outstanding AAFC career.

These statistics can be found in our AAFC box scores, as well as on player game log pages like the ones mentioned above.

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In April of 2021, we announced a series of changes to player name presentations on Baseball Reference and Pro Football Reference in which we changed the main name presentation for many historical players who had been tagged with offensive nicknames decades ago. When we completed that task, we hinted that we'd perform similar work with less offensive nicknames, as well. Read the rest of this entry

Thanks to some research from Pete Palmer and Ken Pullis, we've been able to add several new categories of punting statistics all the way back to when they were first officially tracked in 1976 to Pro Football Reference. The addition of this new data is substantial enough that we have also decided to split out a separate punting stats table from the kicking stats. This means that these statistics will now be in separate tables (rather than merged together) on player, team, league, season, etc pages. A good example of the change is Craig Hentrich, an NFL punter from 1994-2009, who also spent many seasons of his career handling kickoff duties (and occasionally kicking field goals and extra points). His statistics will not only now be more detailed, but hopefully more digestible, as well.

To complement the punt stats we've always carried (punts, punt yards, yards per punt, long punt and punts blocked), we've added return yards against, net punt yards, net yards per punt, touchbacks, touchback percentage, punts inside the 20 and percentage of punts inside the 20.

In addition to appearing on a seasonal level, these new statistics are also presented on a game-by-game level. For instance, here are Hall of Famer Ray Guy's game-by-game punting statistics in 1976.

We hope you enjoy these new additions.

Thanks to our friends at SportsOddsHistory, we've added NFL point spread data that is 100% complete back to 1969 and nearly complete back to 1952*. This data includes AFL games and allows us to expand our point spread searches in the Stathead Team Game Finder all the way back to 1952.

This new data produces some of the largest point spreads we've seen in NFL games. The largest regular season point spread in our dB is now November 13, 1966 when the Baltimore Colts were favored by 28 over the Atlanta Falcons (they did not cover).

The 1960s also included a pair of 20-point dogs that won outright (Vikings over Packers in 1967 and Dolphins over Oilers in 1966).

Additionally, we have added point spread data for a smattering of games between 1941 and 1951, including every championship game (including AAFC) from 1941-51. However, these pre-1952 games are not searchable in Stathead and will just be presented in the box scores for now.

We'd also like to add that while this data expansion gives us point spreads back to 1952, our over/under data is still only complete back to 1978 (except for Super Bowls).

*The data is nearly complete (as opposed to fully complete), because we are missing lines for the following number of games: 1968 (4), 1967 (1), 1965 (2), 1964 (3), 1963 (4), 1962 (3), 1961 (2), 1960 (4), 1953 (2), 1952 (9).

Below is a list of these missing point spreads:

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Entering the 2022 NFL season, the NFL Record and Fact Book (the official record book of the National Football League) listed Ben Roethlisberger as the all-time leader in 'Most Time Sacked, Career' (as it is listed in the guide) with 554. Tom Brady was listed second with 543. Above this list is the note 'Times Sacked has been compiled since 1963."

Subsequently, Brady made a bit of news when he recently passed Big Ben to become the 'all-time' leader in Times Sacked.

Entering the season, Pro-Football-Reference would have listed the same leaderboard as the Record and Fact Book, though our statistics for this category went back to only 1969. However, thanks to the expert research of T.J. Troup, and some consultation with the great John Turney, our updated all-time 'Times Sacked' leaderboard also has a new leader. But it's not Tom Brady. It is Hall of Famer Fran Tarkenton. Read the rest of this entry