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Adding Advanced Stats to Pro-Football-Reference for 2018 and 2019

5th September 2019

In a huge addition for 2019, Pro Football Reference will now be bringing you advanced stats provided by Sportradar, the NFL's exclusive distributor for official real-time scores, player statistics and play-by-play data. In addition to the usual stat coverage you've come to expect from us, we're adding:

* Air yards passing and receiving - indicating how far a pass traveled in the air before it was caught.
* Yards after catch - receiving yards minus air yards, how far a receiver ran after catching the ball
* Receiving drops - receptions missed on balls given a reasonable (non-Odell Beckham-level) effort
* Bad throws by QBs - throws that weren't catchable with normal effort
* Times QBs were blitzed - either 5+ players rushed the QB or a DB rushed the QB
* Times QBs were hurried - defined as a situation when the QB is forced to throw the ball earlier than intended or is chased around/out of the pocket as the result of defensive pressure
* Times QBs were hit - occurs when the QB hits the ground after a throw, not marked on a sack play
* Quarterback scrambles and yards on scrambles (vs. designed quarterback runs)
* Yards before and after contact - defined as the number of yards gained after first contact from a defender
* Broken tackles, both rushing and receiving - the number of times that the runner does something significant to get past/through a defender

We've added these stats to the 2018 passing, rushing, and receiving pages, as well as on player pages and team pages and will be updating them on 2019 pages as soon as games start. These stats are provided via game charting and will be fully populated by the Wednesday following completion of the game, if not earlier. Look for more stat additions as the season continues!

Posted in Advanced Stats, Announcement, Data, Features, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 7 Comments »

Pick Six Passers Added to 1950

28th June 2019

On Pro Football Reference, one of the many statistics we track historically are pick sixes thrown. We previously had this available back to the 1970 season. We have extended that coverage and now have pick-six passers back to the 1950 season. With this addition, we have also updated the single-season and career leaderboards as well as pick six logs available in quarterbacks' player pages.

A special thanks to Sam Istvan for the research done to make this addition. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Data, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Pick Six Passers Added to 1950

Team-Level TFL/QB Hits on PFR

11th June 2019

On Pro-Football-Reference we have quarterback hit statistics back to 2006 and tackles for loss statistics back to 1999, available on defensive players' individual profiles. We also have those statistics at the team level, and we recently added those fields in our team defense section for league seasons when those statistics are available.

For example, viewing the Team Defense section for the 2018 season, you can see the Arizona Cardinals recorded 99 tackles for loss this year, best in the league in that category. Meanwhile, the 2018 Philadelphia Eagles recorded 133 QB hits, more than any other team this season.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Team-Level TFL/QB Hits on PFR

QB Starter Splits on Pro-Football-Reference

20th May 2019

In past blog entries, we announced the addition of starter and substitute data for every quarterback since 1950 to Pro-Football-Reference, and how that allowed for the Player Game Finder to now have the capability for "First x QB Starts" searches.

Another addition that stems from this added starting QB data is a section in quarterbacks' splits pages that easily lays out their statistics just in games they started. This can be a useful additional piece of information for quarterbacks who played a substantial number of games as both a backups and starter during their career, such as Gus Frerotte or Don Strock. It can also help to make the winning record of a quarterback without their appearances as a holder or backup clearer on the splits page; one modern case of this is Tony Romo.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on QB Starter Splits on Pro-Football-Reference

PFR Adds Preseason Over/Unders and Super Bowl Odds

6th May 2019

Pro-Football-Reference has added preseason Super Bowl odds back to 1977, as well as preseason over/unders on win totals back to 1989. This information can be found on a team's season page in their information profile. For example, you can go to the 2011 Eagles page and quickly spot they were +800 to win the Super Bowl before the season, and that the over/under for their win total was set at 10.5. (They would go on to finish under that year.)

You can also see the preseason Super Bowl odds and over/unders for all teams in a season by going to a league season page, and then following the Preseason Odds link located in the Other tab. Here's a link to the 2018 odds table, where you can spot the Super Bowl-winning Patriots having the best odds before the season and the highest-set over/under (which they pushed on).

One question that can be answered with this information is: who were the unlikeliest Super Bowl winners based on these preseason odds? Here's a look at the top 10 longest odds since 1977.

RAM 1999 +15000
NWE 2001 +6000
SFO 1981 +5000
PHI 2017 +4000
RAI 1980 +3500
WAS 1982 +3500
NYG 2007 +3000
RAV 2000 +2200
NYG 2011 +2200
NOR 2009 +2000

Also, here's a look at the teams since 1989 that outperformed their preseason over/unders the most.

O/U Wins Over by
RAM 1999 5.5 13 7.5
SDG 2004 4.5 12 7.5
PIT 2004 7.5 15 7.5
ATL 1998 7 14 7
MIN 1998 8.5 15 6.5
CLT 1999 6.5 13 6.5
ATL 2008 4.5 11 6.5
CAR 1996 5.5 12 6.5
CAR 2015 8.5 15 6.5
CHI 2001 7 13 6

A special thanks to sportsoddshistory.com for contributing to this addition to our site. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form. Also, please keep your eyes peeled for similar content coming to our other sites in the future.

Posted in Announcement, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Super Bowl, Trivia | 1 Comment »

Yards Per Target Added to PFR Player Pages

17th April 2019

Yards per target is a statistic commonly cited by fantasy football players and can be a useful piece for people interpreting a receiver's role in a team's offense. Yards per target can also be seen as a complementary blending of yards per reception, which often favors deep threats without much regard for inefficiency, with catch percentage which favors possession receivers. With that in mind, we had this as a searchable statistic in our Play Index and we are now announcing the addition of yards per target to the receiving tables on player pages.

Taking a look at field stretcher DeSean Jackson's receiving table now makes more apparent that he finished with over 10 yards per target in 6 different seasons, including his 2018 Tampa campaign. On the other side of the coin you can more clearly see Michael Crabtree's transition into a shorter-targeted receiver with 5 consecutive seasons below 7 yards per target through 2018. Looking at an earlier player, we can examine Alvin Harper through the yards per target lens. For example, consider his 1994 season where he finished with a league-leading 24.9 yards per reception, a 9-yard lead on his teammate Michael Irvin. However, when looking at yards per target, due to Harper's much lower catch rate he finished with 10.4 yards per target, compared to Irvin's 10.3 yards per target.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Yards Per Target Added to PFR Player Pages

Begin Your 2019 NFL Draft Prep With PFR

27th February 2019

The NFL Scouting Combine is ramping up, and we find ourselves 2 months away from this year's NFL Draft. You can begin familiarizing yourself with the process and history of the draft on Pro-Football-Reference.

Our 2019 Draft Preview shows you the current draft order, as well as the historical best picks in each slot and the average player value that pick has produced.

We have a 2019 Draft Prospects page that lists the draft-eligible players broken down by positions, as well as links to their college statistics if you want to dive a little deeper into their past performance.

As Combine results come in, you can compare how past Combine participants have fared in 40-yard dashes and vertical jumps, among other drills, with our NFL Combine Results Play Index tool, which can search all available measures back to the 2000 Combine. 2019 results will be searchable after the Combine is completed.

Other sections of our Play Index that you can explore include our Draft Finder, which lets you search for draft results with custom criteria such as position, round, team and more, and our Trade Finder, which lets you search for player or draft pick trades since 1994.

Our Draft Pick Trade Value Chart uses the classic Jimmy Johnson system to assign value points to each pick of the 2019 draft, a great aid if you want to project potential pick trades as we approach Draft Day.

Get yourself acquainted with NFL Draft history at Pro-Football-Reference, all the way back to the first one in 1936, and using the previously mentioned features you can get yourself prepared for the 2019 edition of one of the NFL's biggest offseason events.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, CFB at Sports Reference, Data, Draft, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 1 Comment »

Starter/Sub Data for Every QB Since 1950

6th February 2019

Last month, we announced that you could now search for spans of starts by QBs, back to 1950 in the Player Game Finder. We want to point out that you can also use this feature as a simple toggle to restrict your search to starters or subs. This can be done for all other positions only back to 1999, but for quarterbacks it works back to 1950 using the "QB Started" filter.

Here's a few examples of searches you can run with this capability:

 

Posted in Announcement, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 6 Comments »

“First x QB Starts” Searches Now Possible on PFR’s Player Game Finder

28th January 2019

A couple of weeks, Pro-Football-Reference added a feature to its Player Game Finder tool where you can now filter games by whether a player started or came in as a substitution. While we have that data available for all offensive and defensive players back to just 1999, we actually have data for starting quarterbacks all the way back to 1950. So with that information, we have now added another section to the Player Game Finder where you can search for a range of QB career starts. Most statheads will likely use this for searches involving a QB's first career start or to find cumulative statistics through a QB's first x starts.

Here are some examples of searches you can now execute with this new addition:

Patrick Mahomes has made 17 career regular season starts at QB and continuously set "first x QB starts" records in 2018. Right now, he has a 6-TD and 587-yard lead over Kurt Warner's first 17 starts at QB. He is also just ahead of Warner and Dan Marino for best passer rating in a QB's first 17 starts.

Lamar Jackson appeared in several games in the first half of 2018 but didn't get his first start until Week 11, when he dazzled with 119 rushing yards in a win over Cincinnati. That day he set a post-merger record for most rushing yards in a player's first start at QB, passing Randall Cunningham and Tim Tebow.

Nick Mullens made his first career start on Thursday Night Football and torched the Raiders for 3 TDs and a 151.9 passer rating. That's the highest passer rating of any QB who's made their first NFL start in a non-Sunday game. Honorable mention goes to AFL-era Patriots primary punter Tom Yewcic, who got his first start at QB at the age of 30 on a Friday night and posted a passer rating of 152.6 in a win over the Bills.

Check out our Player Game Finder and see if you can find any other interesting statistics to share! If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Trivia | 1 Comment »

Postseason Point Spreads Now Available Back to 1966 on PFR

15th January 2019

People have been betting on football for decades, and the data surrounding that industry can give us valuable context by informing who was favored at the time and by how much. Because of that, Pro-Football-Reference included all Super Bowl point spreads in the big game's history, as well as all regular season and postseason games since 1977. And now, with a big thanks to SportsOddsHistory.com, we have now extended our postseason point spread data to cover the full Super Bowl era (since 1966).

That covers a lot of historic playoff matchups that PFR previously did not have point spread information on. For example, the 1967 NFL Championship, known today as The Ice Bowl, had the Packers favored by 7 going into the game; that game-winning sneak by Bart Starr was not enough to cover. There's the 1972 AFC Divisional matchup between the Raiders and the Steelers, who were actually 2-point underdogs at home but escaped with the win thanks to the Immaculate Reception by Franco Harris. And then there's the 1975 Vikings, who were favored by 8 points when they fell to the Cowboys in the 1975 divisional round thanks to Roger Staubach's Hail Mary to Drew Pearson.

This newly added data is searchable in the Team Game Finder section of the Play Index. One search you could look for is biggest home underdogs in the playoffs by point spread, and that search would reveal that the 1966 Cowboys, who were 7-point underdogs at home in the 1966 NFL Championship, held that mark until the 2010 Seahawks took their place atop the leaderboard. The 2010 Seahawks covered, while the '66 Cowboys ended up pushing.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Data, History, Play Index, Playoffs, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Trivia | Comments Off on Postseason Point Spreads Now Available Back to 1966 on PFR