9th January 2014
We've added win probability graphs to every Super Bowl, from I to XLVII, from exciting to not-so-exciting. For years prior to 1999, play times were extrapolated from drive start and end times listed in the NFL Gamebooks for those games. For example, if we know this 8-play Rams drive in Super Bowl XIV started at 7:25 and ended at 3:20 with a touchdown, we estimate that each play took roughly 35 seconds off the clock. These are imperfect estimates (obviously the clock will stop on an incomplete pass or an injury and certain plays take longer to run than others), but they are close enough to allow us to calculate a pretty close approximation of the win probability for that given moment.
Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 3 Comments »
6th January 2014
User Affairs Coordinator @ Sports Reference.
Yes, we'll pay you money to spend all day answering questions about sports. Please pass along this job ad to anyone you might think would be interested.
Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Expire30d, Hockey-Reference.com, Olympics at S-R, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Statgeekery, Tips and Tricks, WAR | 5 Comments »
20th December 2013
As a pre-bowl season present to all, we would like to announce that we have added a LOT more college football data. New data fills out individual player stats back to 1956, and includes:
- Passing/Rushing/Receiving - complete seasonal offensive stats back to 1956 for players, which means we now have leaderboards for the past 57+ years
- Interceptions - we now have full data back to 1976, which means that a player like Charles Woodson no longer looks like just a wide receiver, and Deion Sanders isn't just some guy who played for Florida State.
- Punt and kick returns - we now have full data back to 1976, which also benefits Woodson & Sanders, of course, but helps fill out the stats of players like Tim Brown and Barry Sanders
- Punting and kicking stats - also dating back to 1976, you can now get your fill of the kicking stats of various Zendejases
We've also added 1,312 new team seasons worth of data back to 1956, updating every major and many non-major schools' complete offensive stats. Finally, we've fleshed out player links between the college football and pro football sites, so finding pro stats for college players should be much easier (and vice versa). Look for an expansion of the Play Index tools soon to encompass this new data.
A BIG thanks to guys at Sports Data Research for working with us to bring this update to the site.
Read the rest of this entry
Posted in Announcement, CFB at Sports Reference, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on College Football Updates Galore, 1956-Present
19th December 2013
As Nate Silver tweeted out earlier today, Neil Paine is leaving Sports Reference early next month to join Nate's new FiveThirtyEight.com. I know I speak for everyone here at SR when I say I'm feeling a mix of sadness that on a daily basis we won't get to tap Neil's encyclopedic knowledge of European NBA players, his knowledge of pretty much every sabermetric study ever done, his patience dealing with every kind of user complaint, and his wit, pluck, and genuine enthusiasm for his work. But also happiness for Neil that his writing and thinking is getting the platform it justly deserves. I know someday we'll be bragging that we knew Neil Paine before he was a bigshot. :)
I'll be anticipating his articles and I suggest you search them out as well when the site launches in early 2014.
Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Expire30d, Hockey-Reference.com, Olympics at S-R, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
17th December 2013
It's a frequent question - who throws the most interceptions returned for touchdowns? Chase blogged about it here a few years ago, but in an effort to help find who's the king of the pick six I've added the ability to filter by type of touchdown to the game play finder tool. Setting the turnover type to interceptions only and searching for most pick sixes thrown since 1999 shows us Peyton Manning tied with Brett Favre and Carson Palmer as the leaders with 21 apiece, with 810 total thrown over that span.
Note that this does pick up a couple of instances where a pass was intercepted, fumbled, and subsequently returned for a touchdown by the offensive team, so subtract one pick six apiece from Drew Brees and Brad Johnson.
Posted in Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 2 Comments »
12th December 2013
Just saw this tweet:
Which made me wonder - who really is the fumblingest player of all time? First, it seems only fair to look at fumbles on a per-touch basis. Yes, Terry Metcalf managed to fumble 62 times in 81 games (which is admittedly nuts), but he was rushing, receiving, and returning kicks in that time, so he had the ball in his hands 1226 times over those 81 games. On a pure per-touch basis (since 1960 with a minimum of 300 touches) it looks like it was one Kermit Alexander who was the most likely to put the ball on the ground - 29 fumbles on 329 overall touches (that's a fumble almost 9% of the time he put his hands on the ball). Here's your top 50 overall "leaders":
+------------------+---------+---------+---------------+
| name | fumbles | touches | fum_per_touch |
+------------------+---------+---------+---------------+
| Kermit Alexander | 29 | 329 | 0.0881 |
| Howard Stevens | 30 | 372 | 0.0806 |
| Darrien Gordon | 27 | 338 | 0.0799 |
| Todd Kinchen | 26 | 334 | 0.0778 |
| Robbie Martin | 23 | 302 | 0.0762 |
| Ron Smith | 39 | 542 | 0.0720 |
| Eddie Payton | 21 | 321 | 0.0654 |
| Speedy Duncan | 26 | 406 | 0.0640 |
| Walter Stanley | 24 | 400 | 0.0600 |
| Mike Fuller | 21 | 353 | 0.0595 |
| Bobby Wade | 23 | 394 | 0.0584 |
| Sidney Thornton | 22 | 405 | 0.0543 |
| Alvin Haymond | 23 | 433 | 0.0531 |
| Steve Odom | 19 | 367 | 0.0518 |
| Dennis McKinnon | 17 | 336 | 0.0506 |
| Terry Metcalf | 62 | 1226 | 0.0506 |
| Stefan Logan | 17 | 337 | 0.0504 |
| Wayne Patrick | 18 | 363 | 0.0496 |
| R.W. McQuarters | 15 | 304 | 0.0493 |
| Alonzo Highsmith | 16 | 325 | 0.0492 |
| Michael Bates | 20 | 407 | 0.0491 |
| Lionel James | 32 | 665 | 0.0481 |
| Az-Zahir Hakim | 25 | 526 | 0.0475 |
| Dexter Carter | 33 | 696 | 0.0474 |
| Fulton Walker | 15 | 317 | 0.0473 |
| J.W. Lockett | 15 | 319 | 0.0470 |
| Mack Herron | 27 | 581 | 0.0465 |
| Willard Harrell | 36 | 785 | 0.0459 |
| Joe Auer | 16 | 350 | 0.0457 |
| Tommy Mason | 61 | 1354 | 0.0451 |
| Greg Pruitt | 83 | 1843 | 0.0450 |
| Devin Hester | 32 | 717 | 0.0446 |
| Mel J. Gray | 31 | 705 | 0.0440 |
| Rick Kane | 24 | 550 | 0.0436 |
| Shaun McDonald | 13 | 303 | 0.0429 |
| Louis Lipps | 22 | 516 | 0.0426 |
| Scott Laidlaw | 14 | 330 | 0.0424 |
| Rod Woodson | 23 | 552 | 0.0417 |
| Troy Walters | 15 | 362 | 0.0414 |
| Izzy Lang | 14 | 338 | 0.0414 |
| Michael Lewis | 19 | 464 | 0.0409 |
| Dick Gordon | 15 | 368 | 0.0408 |
| Rick Upchurch | 27 | 662 | 0.0408 |
| Wendell Tyler | 64 | 1573 | 0.0407 |
| Roscoe Parrish | 14 | 347 | 0.0403 |
| Bobby Duhon | 15 | 374 | 0.0401 |
| Tim Worley | 20 | 500 | 0.0400 |
| Ed Williams | 12 | 301 | 0.0399 |
| Louie Giammona | 13 | 327 | 0.0398 |
| Bob Tucker | 17 | 428 | 0.0397 |
+------------------+---------+---------+---------------+
Note that without a minimum number of touches the leader is Norman Jefferson who managed 5 fumbles on 11 career kick returns (which is likely why he only got 11 career kick returns).
Posted in Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Fumblingest Players
10th December 2013
Since it's a frequent request & the mercury is dipping ever downward, today I've added temperature as an option to the team game finder. You can search for the best records in sub-10 degree temperatures or even performance in hot games. Look for this to show up on the player game finder soon as well, to help stoke the debate about cold weather performance.
Temperature data from before 1999 is local to the airport nearest the stadium site (as detailed in this blog post) and from 1999 on is from gamebook data directly. Note that temperature is only recorded for games outdoors, so you may want to select "Outdoors" as the stadium type before trying a temperature search.
Posted in Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 3 Comments »
9th December 2013
Chase asked where FSU's +42.3 pre-bowl PPG differential ranked among all BCS-bowl teams historically, so I thought I'd run a quick database search:
Read the rest of this entry
Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, CFB at Sports Reference, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com, SRS, Stat Questions, Statgeekery, Trivia | 6 Comments »
5th December 2013
Today we push out a tool I've been meaning to write for a while: a player streak finder. Inspired by the great Baseball Reference streak finders, this tool will let you find consecutive player games or seasons in which a particular criteria was met. For instance, if you're wondering which QB has the longest streak of games without an interception, the answer is Tom Brady, with 11 (for games with at least 14 pass attempts). Or how about which running back has the most consecutive seasons of 1000+ yards (Emmit Smith, with 11).
You can also filter by team on offense (or defense for games searches), for instance to find out which quarterback has the most consecutive games against the Browns with a TD pass or which Bears running back has the most consecutive 1000+ yard seasons.
Posted in Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 7 Comments »
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