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Archive for the 'Pro-Football-Reference.com' Category

Searching for Quarter-by-Quarter Scoring Breakdowns on PFR

28th August 2018

With Pro-Football-Reference's Team Game Finder, you can search for various scoring breakdowns such as most points scored in the first quarter, or scoring margins through a given number of quarters. We have now gotten the Team Game Finder to also search for scoring margins concentrated to a single quarter, as well as second half scoring margins.

One example of a search that's now possible with the Team Game Finder is scoring margin in the third quarter over the course of a full season. Doing that for 2017, it stands out that the 2017 Tennessee Titans were fifth-best in the league in third quarter scoring margin at +42, especially when juxtaposed with a terrible -53 fourth quarter margin.

One example of a newly possible second half scoring margin search involves the 2017 Seattle Seahawks, who were well-known for starting off slow and turning it on after halftime, to the tune of a -53 first half margin and a +87 second half margin. Looking for other -50/+50 combos in NFL history, you can see even more disparate offenses such as the 1989 Green Bay Packers who finished 10-6 thanks to a +92 second half scoring margin, in spite of their -89 margin in the first half of games.

If you have any questions or suggestions about Pro-Football-Reference's Team Game Finder or other parts of the site, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.

Posted in Announcement, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Searching for Quarter-by-Quarter Scoring Breakdowns on PFR

Franchise Coaching Leaderboards Added to PFR

14th August 2018

On Pro-Football-Reference, we've made a small addition to our franchise coaching encyclopedia pages, adding a cumulative statistics table on top of our year-by-year results table. With this, it's now a little easier to look at franchise leaders in wins and playoff appearances. The wide berth between Bill Belichick and the rest of the Patriots' coaches is that much more evident on New England's franchise coaches page, and now there's a place on the Philadelphia Eagles' page to have Doug Pederson sandwiched by Greasy Neale and Buck Shaw in the franchise championships column.

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

Posted in Announcement, History, Leaders, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Franchise Coaching Leaderboards Added to PFR

Pro-Football-Reference Introduces The Team Record Finder

9th August 2018

In an inevitability, your team gets off to a rocky start by dropping its first four games of the season. NFL media members will then leap to giving you some morsel of hope by telling you, "Wait, this 0-4 team made the playoffs, so don't panic!"

Well, now you can find this kind of information on your own with Pro-Football-Reference's Team Record Finder, the latest addition to our ever-expanding Play Index. With this tool, you can input any record that a team may have had at some point in their season, and then see the final record of every team that was in that situation.

Using the previously mentioned example, here is a list of the 91 teams since 1990 (when the 12-team playoff system began) that started 0-4 and their final records. Along with a full list, the Team Record Finder gives you a nice summary including a team's average finish (4-12 if you started 0-4) and the percentage of teams who made the playoffs (1.1% of 0-4 teams managed to accomplish that). For teams that did make the playoffs, we also include how far they got; we can see that the only 0-4 team to make the playoffs was the 1992 San Diego Chargers, who finished the regular season with 11 wins and won their wild card game before falling in the divisional round to the Miami Dolphins.

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

Posted in Announcement, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 4 Comments »

Defensive Stats Added to Player Comparison Finder

7th August 2018

Over three years ago, we added the Player Comparison Finder tool to the Pro Football Reference Play Index. The tool, which allows you to compare up to six players at a time over a season or span of seasons, originally only allowed you to compare offensive skill position players. However, earlier this week we were discussing freshly-minted Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins and how he compared with the other great safeties of his era and realized it'd be nice to see some data all on one screen. So you can now see things like tackles, interceptions, sacks and forced/recovered fumbles in the Player Comparison Finder. For instance, here's B-Dawk compared with Troy Polamalu and Ed Reed.

Totals Table
Receiving Sacks & Tackles Fumbles Def Interceptions
Rk Player From To CarAV G Rec Yds TD Y/R Lng Tkl Ast Sk FF FR Yds TD Int Yds TD
1 Brian Dawkins* 1996 2011 100 224 1 57 1 57.0 57 895 236 26.0 36 19 76 1 37 513 2
2 Troy Polamalu 2003 2014 94 158 0 0 0 0 581 197 12.0 14 7 120 2 32 398 3
3 Ed Reed 2002 2013 106 174 0 0 0 0 531 112 6.0 11 13 152 2 64 1590 7
Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 8/7/2018.

Posted in Announcement, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Defensive Stats Added to Player Comparison Finder

Full Coaching Histories Since 1990 Added to Pro-Football-Reference

16th July 2018

On Pro-Football-Reference, while the majority of our statistics are for players, we also have a good amount of coaching data, including team ranks during a coach's tenure as well as coaching history. One of our offseason projects at PFR was to fill out the coaching history of every head coach and coordinator since 1990, and we have pushed that data out for the public eye today.

Some examples:

Tom Cable is currently an assistant head coach and offensive line coach for the Seattle Seahawks, and he's been on the West Coast for the grand majority of his career, ever since he started off as a graduate assistant for Idaho and San Diego State in the late 1980s.

David Shula had an ignominious head coaching tenure for the Bengals of the 1990s, but now we've added in his 1991 year as a WR coach that got him promoted to head coach the ensuing season.

Lane Kiffin has been out of the NFL for a while, but we've added in his latter-day college experience as an offensive coordinator for Alabama and a head coach for Florida Atlantic. Never forget he got his head coaching gig with the Raiders from a college offensive coordinator position, so anything is possible.

To get at least one actually successful coach in here, Dick Vermeil now has his 1970s stints with UCLA as well as his 1969 season as the Los Angeles Rams' special teams coordinator included in his history.

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

Posted in Announcement, Data, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Trivia | 2 Comments »

Hockey-Reference and Pro-Football-Reference Add Team Gamelogs

9th July 2018

On Baseball-Reference and Basketball-Reference, we've offered an option to see game logs on a team basis. If you wanted to take a look at the averages of the Miami Heat's 27-game winning streak in 2013, or how the Cardinals did in 2016 when they hit multiple home runs in 9 consecutive games, summable game logs allow you to check the averages during your specified span (done by clicking on two rows to highlight the group of games you're interested in).

Now, we've gone ahead and made that an option for Hockey-Reference and Pro-Football-Reference as well. Want to add up the goal differential during the Columbus Blue Jackets' 16-game winning streak in December 2016? Or maybe take a look at how many yards the Browns gave up in just the second half of 2017? That can now be done with the addition of summable game logs to team pages. Similarly to team game logs on Baseball-Reference and Basketball-Reference, just click on two rows and the site will sum and average the rows highlighted in that range.

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

Posted in Announcement, Features, Hockey-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Tips and Tricks | 5 Comments »

Third-Team All-Pros Added To The 1920s and 30s

19th April 2018

Speaking from experience, Pro-Football-Reference has been a godsend to fans of the National Football League who want to investigate and sift through its near-century of history. For that reason, small additions to fill out the league's history are always appreciated, and today we've added in third-team All-Pro selections by The Green Bay Press-Gazette and Collyers Eye Magazine, where available, from 1923 to 1935. In an era where we don't have many of the statistics we can use to evaluate modern players, honors like All-Pro selections become all the more useful to help us understand how good a player was viewed by contemporaries.

Some interesting notes that come from this addition:

  1. We get to fill out some additional honors for Pro Football Hall of Famers such as Johnny "Blood" McNally, Joe Guyon and Cal Hubbard
  2. Cub Buck (aren't names from 100 years ago fun?) gets three consecutive third-team selections added to his ledger. That includes his 1924 season where he not only scored eight extra points and three field goals, but also threw a touchdown to Curly Lambeau. His reign as heaviest player to throw a TD was unrivaled until the likes of Daunte Culpepper and JaMarcus Russell emerged in the 2000s. 
  3. Milt Romney was a third-team selection at wingback for his rookie season in 1923. If that name sounds familiar to you, he is indeed a first cousin once removed of former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

So if you're a fan of the NFL's history, then dig into our All-Pro and other Awards and Honors pages and see what other new names and personalities from an era long gone you can discover.

Posted in Announcement, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on Third-Team All-Pros Added To The 1920s and 30s

Alex Bonilla Joins Sports Reference

7th March 2018

I'm pleased to welcome Alex Bonilla to Sports Reference as a User Affairs Coordinator. He'll be answering user questions, working on our new Stathead.com newsletter and much more. He's on twitter at @AlexChacon_OVA. This hire brings us to ten full-time employees.

In other news, Mike Lynch has been promoted from Users Affairs Coordinator and is now Product Manager for Sports Reference.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, expire21d, Hockey-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com, Statgeekery | Comments Off on Alex Bonilla Joins Sports Reference

NFL Player of the Week Leaderboard Added to Pro Football Reference

12th February 2018

To enhance our coverage of NFL Players of the Week, we have also added an NFL Player of the Week leaderboard. As you can see, Tom Brady is the all-time leader in this honor, which dates back to 1984.

Posted in Announcement, Awards, Data, Features, History, Pro-Football-Reference.com | Comments Off on NFL Player of the Week Leaderboard Added to Pro Football Reference

We’ve Hired Two Data Developers — Jaclyn Mahoney and Jay Hutchinson

1st February 2018

I'm pleased to welcome Jaclyn Mahoney and Jay Hutchinson to Sports Reference in the roles of Data Developer. They'll be working behind the scenes to make sure our data is accurate and updated in a timely manner. Their main focus, for now, will be helping us push FBref.com out the door this spring.

I've written a bit about them on our About Page.

Posted in Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, expire21d, FBref, Hockey-Reference.com, Pro-Football-Reference.com | 1 Comment »