Sports Reference Blog

Announcing the Player Streak Finder

Posted by Mike on December 5, 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.

Related posts:

  1. PI Player Streak Finder
  2. PI Team Pitching Streak Finder
  3. Filter Play Finder results by individual player
  4. Things I Learned From the New PFR Play Finder: Which Teams Chewed Up the Most Rushing Yards by Half?
  5. Filter Play Finder Results

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 5th, 2013 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Announcement, Pro-Football-Reference.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

7 Responses to “Announcing the Player Streak Finder”

  1. Mark Growcott Says: December 6th, 2013 at 1:05 am

    This is very exciting and something I have been crying out for over the past 3 years. I will enjoy this and will comment in more detail after I have spent some time using it.

    Thank you.

    Now we just need the Team Streak Finder to complement it.

  2. Dave D Says: December 6th, 2013 at 9:28 am

    A couple of observations:

    I miss the "reset" button that usually is next to the "find streaks with" wording.

    Also what is the correct meaning for the "active" segment? Is that only for the games that are ending with the most recent?
    What if a player did something for 3 straight games at the start of the season but no player has done it since...is that active or not? It's not the most recent but it hadn't happened since it happened.

  3. Mike Says: December 6th, 2013 at 10:39 am

    Will add a reset button, definitely.

    As for "active" I'm defining that as a) the player is active, b) the last game of the streak occurred in the current season, and c) the last game of the streak was the last game the player played. For instance, on the list of active streaks of 50+ yard rushing games, Ahmad Bradshaw shows up because he had two such games earlier in the season before he got injured. I consider that active since he could come back on Sunday & rush for 50 yards again and thus continue his streak.

  4. Mark Growcott Says: December 6th, 2013 at 1:33 pm

    Here are my initial observations and thoughts.

    Can you include searches for Rookies, searches on Defense (Consecutive Games with a Sack, Interception) and Returns TDs (Punt Return, Kick Return, Int Return).

    Also under Passing, can you please include searches for Consecutive Games with a Pass Intercepted and Returned for TD “Pick 6” (See Matt Schaub this season), also Consecutive Games Played and Games Started.

    This query for Consecutive Games with 4 INTs, http://pfref.com/tiny/Gc5NR returns a result of 2 but you can’t sort these by date correctly. The 2 most recent instances are Josh Freeman and Peyton Manning.

    Also the record for Most Consecutive Games with a Reception is 274 by Jerry Rice (1985-2004) but when I try and replicate that here I get a much different result http://pfref.com/tiny/cTUg9

    Thanks again.

  5. Dave D Says: December 6th, 2013 at 2:45 pm

    I've noticed the win/loss segment does not return results but the home/road section does.

    One issue about my previous streak comment:
    This page http://pfref.com/tiny/LNDfX

    says Tony Romo as active but not Ben Roethlisberger. Ben's most recent home game (unlike Tony's) was not his most recent game but it's still active as of now.

  6. Mike Says: December 6th, 2013 at 3:37 pm

    It turns out we are missing some participation data for games in which players have no stats at all. For instance, Jerry Rice 's 274 consecutive games with a catch streak started on 12/09/1985 but while he did participate in the previous game, we do not list him as having done so because he had zero catches. We're working to rectify that, but it may be worth keeping in mind when looking for streaks of the "consecutive games with a catch" sort.

    Having that data will also help us put in defensive streaks, since right now defenders don't show up as having participated without a stat of some sort, which obviously throws off consecutive X sorts of searches.

  7. Mike Says: December 6th, 2013 at 4:10 pm

    Also I've fixed the win/loss stuff, the date sorting, and the active streaks w/ qualifiers issue (so it's not looking at last game date as indicator of "active", it's looking at, eg, last home game date).