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Approximate Value Added for Kickers and Punters

Neil — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:29:27 +0000

Today, we added a new feature to our popular Approximate Value metric on the site -- AV totals for kickers and punters. (Don't worry, we've warned Doug Drinen, and he hasn't suffered any adverse health side-effects that we know of.)

The methodology is described in tortuous detail on the AV formula page, but we basically looked at salary data to calibrate kicker and punter AV against our existing AV data, and used some simple metrics (kicking points added above average using distance data; punting gross yards per attempt w/ an adjustment for blocks) to measure kicking/punting performance. The best career AVs in each category are as follows:

Kicker	AV	Punter	AV
Morten Andersen	97	Shane Lechler	51
Gary Anderson	91	Sean Landeta	50
Jason Hanson	83	Jerrel Wilson	48
Nick Lowery	82	Rohn Stark	45
Lou Groza	81	Ray Guy	44
Jan Stenerud	79	Jeff Feagles	42
George Blanda	78	Reggie Roby	41
John Kasay	72	Lee Johnson	38
Matt Stover	70	Bobby Walden	38
Jim Bakken	69	Rich Camarillo	37
John Carney	66	Chris Gardocki	37
Norm Johnson	65	Dave Jennings	37
Eddie Murray	64	Bobby Joe Green	37
Fred Cox	62	Craig Hentrich	36
Jason Elam	60	John James	33
Jim Turner	59	Bryan Barker	33
Mark Moseley	57	Todd Sauerbrun	32
Al Del Greco	55	Brian Hansen	32
Ryan Longwell	54	Matt Turk	31
Garo Yepremian	54	Mark Royals	31

We're still working out some AV kinks (particularly in terms of All-Pro bonuses) with certain players who played both kicker/punter and another position -- think Lou Groza -- but for the most part we're happy with the results, and we thought it was time special-teamers got their AV due.

All-Decade Teams Added

Neil — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 17:35:44 +0000

Today, we added a small new dataset to the site's Awards Section: All-Decade Teams. We have the official All-Decade Teams from the Pro Football Hall of Fame (and, in the case of the AFL, the AFL Hall of Fame) going back to the 1920s:

We also assembled our own Pro-Football-Reference All-Decade teams using Approximate Value, and list those as well:

New Drive Finder Play Index Tool

Mike — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:33:38 +0000

Today we're rolling out our newest PFR Play Index tool: the Drive Finder. Similar to the Play Finder tool, this will let you find drives for all types of game situations, featuring all drives from 2000-2012. We include a breakdown of average time, yards, plays, points, and even starting position so you can get an idea of the situation behind each drive. Did you know the 2012 Browns average drive started at their own 30.6 yard line with them trailing by 2.8 points? Well now you do! You can also find:

In addition, we have added drive breakdowns to all of the boxscore pages since 2000 which include summaries of offensive performance for each drive (look for the "Drives" section midway through the page above the full play-by-play). Now Patriots fans can relive both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Search Our Pro Football Data Using the P-F-R Play Index

Neil — Wed, 15 May 2013 20:56:19 +0000

The Play Index is the name we use to refer to PFR's collection of top-notch research tools. Read below for more information on some of the applications we have made available to you, and also check out our blog posts about the Play Index. As always, if you have any suggestions or corrections please fill out our feedback form.

Game Play Finder

Search all plays from 2000 to today to find performances that match your criteria. Answer questions like…

Which quarterback had the highest rating with less than 5 minutes to play in 2009?
How many 50+ yard plays have the Bills given up from 2000-2011?
What was the success rate of 4th down plays in 2011?

Player Season Finder

Search through player season stats spanning from 1920 to today for single seasons or combined seasons that match your criteria. Answer questions like…

Who was the first quarterback to pass for 4000 yards in a season?
Which player had the most pass receptions during the 1970s?
Who is the offensive lineman with the most Pro Bowl selections?

The answers to these questions and many, many more are at your fingertips using the Player Season Finder.

Player Game Finder

Search through player game logs spanning from 1960 to today for games that match your criteria. You can find…

the top rushing performances in the 1973 season
a list of all players with 100+ yards rushing and receiving in the same game
the quarterback who has the most games with 4+ touchdown passes since the merger

With the Player Game Finder, the possibilities are almost endless.

Player Touchdown Finder

Search through every touchdown scored from 1940 to today for scores that match your criteria. Did you know…

Impress your friends and come up with your own "Did You Know" with a little help from the Player Touchdown Finder.

Team Game Finder

Find team games or seasons matching certain criteria. Did you know…

There have been 10 games in NFL postseason history where the eventual winner overcame a 10-or-more-point halftime deficit?
The 1983 Redskins had a +46 turnover differential, the best of all time?
The Chargers have 114 300-yard passing games in their history. That's more than any other franchise.

Super Bowl Play Finder

Search through every play in Super Bowl History.

Draft Finder

Search through every NFL and AFL draft pick.

Boxscore Search Tools

Find head-to-head results and also find games matching a particular score.

Video: S-R Stat Table SHARE Tutorial

Neil — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:38:52 +0000

Here's a 2-minute tutorial on how to embed professional-looking stat tables on your own blog:

Support Pro-Football-Reference.com, Sponsor a Page

Neil — Wed, 08 May 2013 20:10:22 +0000

It may be the offseason, but Sponsoring a page is still a fun, fast, and easy way to support what we're doing here at Pro-Football-Reference. With a sponsorship, you can:

Show your support for your favorite player or team.
Drum up traffic for your own site & draw in fans with a common interest.
Get some well-deserved recognition for your support of PFR.
Make your voice heard by the tens of thousands of people who visit Pro-Football-Reference every day.

Here's all you have to do to get involved:

Create a membership account.
Find the page(s) you'd like to support, and click "sponsor" (available pages).
If the page you want is already sponsored, click "Alert Me!" to be informed when the current sponsorship expires.
Follow the instructions to create your message and make your payment.
Your message and links will be visible on the page after we approve them (usually in less than 24 hours).

And who knows, if you're clever enough, your message might end up on lists like these.

Follow us on Twitter to Win a Free Baseball-Reference.com Play Index Subscription

admin — Tue, 07 May 2013 21:13:49 +0000

Every Monday, for the rest of the year, we'll be randomly selecting one twitter user who follows any three of our five Sports Reference Twitter accounts to receive a free Baseball-Reference.com Play Index account. If you are already a subscriber, we'll extend you for a year.

Sports Reference uses twitter to tweet out nuggets of information we find, notify users of new features, make occasional commercial messages, and generally enjoy ourselves. Here are the five Sports Reference twitter feeds:

@baseball_ref: Baseball-Reference.com
@bball_ref: Basketball-Reference.com
@pfref: Pro-Football-Reference.com
@hockey_ref: Hockey-Reference.com
@sports_ref: CFB, CBB, Olympics, and Announcements for All Sites

Add Your Blog Posts to PFR Player Pages

Neil — Thu, 02 May 2013 15:33:52 +0000

PFR Player Name Linker / Add your Site to our Player Newsfeeds

It's the offseason, which means lots of news on the player-movement front. That's why we have newsfeeds on the PFR player pages, showing the latest player news from KFFL, injury reports and links to relevant PFR blog posts. If you have a blog or website with an RSS feed you can add your site to relevant player pages as well. Our Player Linker Tool will take your blog posts as you've written them and run them through a program and add links to PFR player pages where appropriate. So while you don't have the resource to create your own player pages for your site, you can treat us as your site's statistics partner, linking Eli Manning's name to our stats or any player all the way back to Y.A. Tittle and Otto Graham.

If the links then appear in your rss feed and you let us know to look for them, we'll pull them out of your feed and then link back to you from Eli's page, or Otto Graham's or whomever you link to.

If you help your users find our great content, we'll help our users find yours. And best of all it is all automated except for one click of an easy-to-install bookmarklet. Check the Player Newsfeeds page for details. This link share will also work for tables you share using the SHARE tooltip found above every stats table on the site.

Draft Trades Added

Mike — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:58:49 +0000

Trying to keep up with all the activity around the 2013 NFL Draft, we've added draft transactions to the bottom of that page, as well as adding previous years (see 2012 trades and 2011 trades). In addition, I've added team-based trade summaries to each team draft page, through which I have learned that the Broncos briefly held the pick that turned into Doug Martin.

2013 Schedule Released and Updated

Mike — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:22:11 +0000

We have put up the full 2013 NFL schedule as well as each individual team's schedule.