Sports Reference Blog

Just wanted to post a quick blurb that we have made a few recent additions to the Team Streak Finder:

• Interceptions Returned for TD (last team with 4-game streak: dominant 2002 Buccaneers defense)
• Safeties (No team since the merger has had one in 3 straight games)
• Point Spread (Greatest Show on Turf was favored in 50 straight games)
• Interceptions Returned for TD by Opponent (The 2013 Texans are the only team since the merger to throw a pick-6 in 5 straight games)
• Safeties by Opponent (The 1980 Seahawks are the last team to be tackled in their own end zone in 3 straight games)

Hey @pfref, where does winning after a 25-point deficit rank in terms of #Browns all-time come-from-behind wins?

— Dusty Sloan (@TheDustySloan) October 5, 2014

This question about the Browns' comeback from a 25 point deficit yesterday inspired me to build a set of pages for the greatest comebacks for each NFL team plus a list of each team's comeback victories. You can see there that the Browns' win was their biggest comeback of all time and tied for the third biggest deficit ever overcome to win a game.

EDIT: I realized I could turn this around and do the greatest blown leads for each NFL team, too. So take heart, Titans fans - that wasn't the worst blown lead in franchise history (that.. doesn't make you feel much better, does it?)

After the season ends we update the similarity scores for all players. One special feature we have is similarity scores for career stats and also through each year of the player's career. So when we show that Mike Trout's most similar player through age 22 is Mickey Mantle you get a bit more feel for the path he is on.

Game Previews - Baseball-Reference.com

Every possible pitcher batter matchup is detailed along with a host of other details.

Since we're busy adding targets (since 1998) everywhere, I've also put them on the player season finder tool, so for instance you can find the most targets since 1998, sorted by total receptions. In addition I've added Catch Percentage as a searchable and sortable item, the number of targets that actually turned into receptions - Marshall Faulk has the highest percentage of targets caught for players with 100+ targets in a season, and in 2014, Brent Celek has the lowest ratio of passes caught to targets among players with 10+ targets.

@pfref Any quick-ish way to use the PI to find out if a team has won and lost by a margin in the same season? WAS has a 31-pt W and 31-pt L

— hscer (@hscer) September 26, 2014

Because it's Friday and an interesting trivia question, I went and looked it up in the database - it's actually not as uncommon as you'd think to win and lose in the same season by the same large point differential. The big winners (and losers, of course) in this category are the 1988 Saints managed to beat the Broncos 42-0 and two weeks later lose to Minnesota, 45-3. Here are the top 25 teams with a large win and corresponding large loss in in the same season since 1970:

+------------+---------+------+------+-------------+---+
| name       | year_id | w    | l    | points_diff | c |
+------------+---------+------+------+-------------+---+
| Saints     |    1988 |    1 |    1 |          42 | 2 |
| Patriots   |    1993 |    1 |    1 |          38 | 2 |
| Lions      |    2007 |    1 |    1 |          37 | 2 |
| Giants     |    2009 |    1 |    1 |          37 | 2 |
| Bengals    |    1988 |    1 |    1 |          35 | 2 |
| 49ers      |    2009 |    1 |    1 |          35 | 2 |
| Broncos    |    1979 |    1 |    1 |          35 | 2 |
| Jets       |    1976 |    1 |    1 |          34 | 2 |
| Lions      |    1991 |    1 |    1 |          32 | 2 |
| Vikings    |    1977 |    1 |    1 |          32 | 2 |
| Patriots   |    2003 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Bengals    |    1986 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Vikings    |    1989 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Jets       |    1986 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Redskins   |    2014 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Bills      |    2003 |    1 |    1 |          31 | 2 |
| Saints     |    1976 |    1 |    1 |          30 | 2 |
| Buccaneers |    1992 |    1 |    2 |          28 | 3 |
| Ravens     |    2008 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Chargers   |    1984 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Packers    |    1992 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Buccaneers |    1979 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Chiefs     |    1985 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Vikings    |    1982 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
| Broncos    |    2004 |    1 |    1 |          28 | 2 |
+------------+---------+------+------+-------------+---+

As part of our plan to continue to add "advanced" stats to the site, we've included new rate stats on the "Additional Stats" pages for players. These new stats are primarily "per 60 minutes" versions of already existing stats, but we also have included a break out of assists to include both 1st and 2nd assists per 60 minutes. The advantage of the "per 60" versions of these stats is that it makes it easier to compare players with wildly varying amounts of ice time.

These stats are available by clicking on the "Additional Stats" link on the player pages:

As always, we appreciate any feedback or questions.

We've added advanced splits to our existing player splits pages, breaking down passing, rushing, and receiving performances by down, distance, score differential, quarter, and more, for every year from 1998 to 2014. Did you know that..

• In his career, Tom Brady has 105 rushing attempts on 3rd/4th and short for 95 first downs
• In 2012, Adrian Peterson had the majority of his rushing attempts and yards on first down
• In 2014, Calvin Johnson has been targeted 5 times in the red zone and has one catch

Note that you can always slice & dice the play-by-play data to your heart's content using our play finder tool, and we're also working on adding further splits, such as playing surface, weather, point spread, and more. If you have any suggestions, let us know in the comments below.

Just a quick note that we have added target data back to 1998 on our Fantasy pages. For instance, you can now see that Jordy Nelson leads all players with 37 targets thus far this season. This data is now live for 2014 and will be populating the pages for 1998-2013 soon. Hope everyone finds this info useful when they're setting their weekly lineups.

We've added pass target data to player pages and team pages since 1998 - see the 'Tgt' column under 'Receiving'. And if you mouse over the targets number, it will show you the player's catch percentage, defined as his number of receptions/number of targets.

This target data is derived from the play-by-play data that's used to populate our play finder tool, so when you see something in a box score like "Jay Cutler pass incomplete short left intended for Brandon Marshall", we are counting that as a target for Marshall as determined by the official scorer's judgement.

Look for these to be added to the player season finder and player game finder tools soon. And if you're curious, the most-targeted player in our DB is Marvin Harrison in 2002 with a whopping 205 targets, which might explain why he was able to set the single season receptions record that year.