Sports Reference Blog
Starting and Relief Stats Now Searchable on PFR’s Player Game Finder
Posted by Alex Bonilla on January 11, 2019
One of Pro-Football-Reference's Play Index tools is the Player Game Finder, which can do many kinds of game-level searches. A new filter we've just added to the form is searching just for games where the player started or games where the player did not start. We have this information back to 1999 for offensive and defensive players.
Some examples of searches you can now do with this new feature:
Derrick Henry had a monster 47.8 fantasy points (standard scoring) in Week 14 against the Jaguars this year, but Dion Lewis was the starting running back for the Titans that night. Since 1999, Henry's game is the most fantasy points by a non-starter.
Amobi Okoye started the first game of the 2007 season for the Texans at 20 years and 91 days old, while Tremaine Edmunds' first start this year, also a Week 1 situation, came at 20 years and 130 days old. Those two are the youngest players to start an NFL game since 1999.
Elvis Dumervil has 105.5 sacks in his career, 42 of those coming in games he didn't start. He edges out Robert Mathis for most sacks in relief since 1999.
If you want to weed out QBs brought in for trick plays and only focus on QBs who were targeted as a receiver in a game they started at QB, you can do that now. Drew Brees leads with 9 QB starts where he was targeted, and Donovan McNabb with 8 such starts.
If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form.
[…] 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 […]