The Great Pro-Football Reference Play Index Rollout: Part II
Posted by Neil Paine on Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Yesterday, we began the much-anticipated unveiling of the new PFR Play Index by giving you a guided tour of the Player Game Logs, Splits, and Scoring Logs. As great as those new features are, though, I think today's is even more thrilling: the Player Season Finder.
If you're also a baseball fan, chances are you've seen this page at B-R -- after all, it's one of our most popular tools, in addition to being one of the most exciting ones on the site. And now you can execute similar database queries here at PFR as well. The only limit to the Season Finder is your own imagination.
For instance, say I wanted to find the top rookie seasons by a WR in the 2000s. Or the least valuable 3,000-yard passing seasons ever. Or the post-merger leaders in punt-return TD... The list goes on and on. In fact, the sheer number of options at your disposal here is staggering. You can choose single seasons or multiple seasons, the span of years you want the search to cover, the player's age or his level of experience (want to know who has the most INTs by a CB before his 25th birthday? We've got it.), you can search by league, team, active/inactive status in 2008, Hall of Fame status, position (the position finder is smart, too -- players have separate single-season and career positional designations), plus an insane number of possible criteria in 75 statistical categories. 75, people! You just can't get this kind of thing anywhere else!
My descriptions don't do this feature justice, though... You really have to try the Season Finder out for yourself to fully understand the degree of awesomeness we're dealing with here. Just a few minutes of tinkering around with it, and I know you'll feel the same way I do: namely, that this tool is going to occupy massive amounts of my time in the foreseeable future. And there's nothing wrong with that.
More PI Rollout Posts:
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 at 7:25 AM and filed under Play Index, Site Features. Follow comments here with the RSS 2.0 feed. Skip to the end and leave a response. Trackbacks are closed.
How do I search for stuff like the most all-pros in a players in first 10 years?
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:31 am | PermalinkWhat's the difference between "WR" and "REC"?
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:36 am | PermalinkAren't they the same position?
pm wrote:
How do I search for stuff like the most all-pros in a players in first 10 years?
Here you go:
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/tiny/AL4B4
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:36 am | PermalinkDave D wrote:
What’s the difference between “WR” and “REC”?
Aren’t they the same position?
"REC" includes both wide receivers and tight ends while "WR" is just wide receivers.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:38 am | PermalinkThis is a great time SAVER!
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:42 am | PermalinkHow do I search for stuff like the most all-pros in a players in first 10 years?
To apply this to other cases. Set Year in the first column to "First" to "10th" in the first column and then under Sort By choose "All-Pro First Team Selections"
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:50 am | PermalinkSean wrote:
To apply this to other cases. Set Year in the first column to “First” to “10th” in the first column and then under Sort By choose “All-Pro First Team Selections”
You also have to select "Search for Combined Seasons" at the top of the search form.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 9:53 am | PermalinkQuestion: Is it possible for you to include QB W-L in the database? You can probably put it in the passing section.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 10:23 am | Permalinkhow do i find average yardage per passing touchdown/rushing touchdown/receiving touchdown?
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 11:30 am | Permalinkhow do i find average yardage per passing touchdown/rushing touchdown/receiving touchdown?
Do you means passing yards/passing td or do you mean the average length of each touchdown pass?
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 12:38 pm | Permalinkmeant average length of each touchdown pass, each touchdown run, each touchdown reception.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 12:59 pm | PermalinkDo you guys have a way of searching for years as a starter instead of number of years in the league (e.g. number of passing yards in first 5 season as a starter, instead of number of passing yards in first 5 season in the league.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 1:33 pm | Permalinkvw, no we can't do that, but you might be interested in what we have coming on Friday.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 1:43 pm | PermalinkQuestion: How do I find out who had the most receptions in a 5 year span (any time in the career)?
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 2:52 pm | PermalinkTres bien!
If we're making wishlists, it'd be cool if the leaders section had AV in it, since it's been incorporated into the rest of the site.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 2:53 pm | PermalinkGreat. Been waiting a while for this feature to make it's way to the football site. Very useful for basketball & hockey.
Posted on 26-Aug-09 at 4:22 pm | PermalinkI also noticed game log searches will be coming. More great news. I can finally finish this list at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_quarterbacks_who_have_posted_a_perfect_passer_rating
I noticed that George Blanda doesn't come up as a QB when you do the searches. His position is listed as QB (and we know he was a kicker too), but he never shows up.
Also is there a way to program certain HOFers as contributors instead of players? When you do a search and include HOF QBs, Jim Finks comes up. Finks was inducted as a contributor, not for his playing days.
Posted on 28-Aug-09 at 3:38 am | PermalinkPossible bug:
I wanted to get a list of players who made the Pro Bowl in their final season. The results page has some text that appears incorrect. It says:
"For single seasons, from 1980 to 2007, in 1st to last season, sorted by descending Pro Bowl Selections."
It says "1st to last" but should say "last to last".
Here is the URL:
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/psl_finder.cgi?request=1&sum=0&year_min=1980&year_max=2007&season_start=-1&season_end=-1&age_min=0&age_max=99&league_id=&team_id=&is_active=&is_hof=&pos_is_qb=Y&pos_is_rb=Y&pos_is_wr=Y&pos_is_te=Y&pos_is_rec=Y&pos_is_t=Y&pos_is_g=Y&pos_is_c=Y&pos_is_ol=Y&pos_is_dt=Y&pos_is_de=Y&pos_is_dl=Y&pos_is_ilb=Y&pos_is_olb=Y&pos_is_lb=Y&pos_is_cb=Y&pos_is_s=Y&pos_is_db=Y&pos_is_k=Y&pos_is_p=Y&c1stat=&c1comp=gt&c1val=&c2stat=&c2comp=gt&c2val=&c3stat=&c3comp=gt&c3val=&c4stat=&c4comp=gt&c4val=&order_by=pro_bowls
Also, I ran the (I think) exact same search at about 11am today and 2:30pm today with slightly different results. The second time, the results correctly included guys like Korey Stringer, Robert Smith and Sean Taylor. Maybe I made some slight change in between queries or...?
Posted on 28-Aug-09 at 3:47 pm | PermalinkRichie, the query returned the correct results, but the query description was wrong. I believe I have fixed it. Thanks for catching that.
Posted on 28-Aug-09 at 6:25 pm | Permalinkpm wrote:
Question: How do I find out who had the most receptions in a 5 year span (any time in the career)?
I'm sorry, but you can't do that at this time.
Posted on 28-Aug-09 at 6:25 pm | PermalinkA team season and game finder would be another great addition
Posted on 29-Aug-09 at 8:29 am | Permalink(examples: fewest turnovers by a team in a season or most turnovers in a game by a team that won with less than 300 yds offense)
On searches that provide more than 100 results, a sorting should give the lowest or highest inclusive...not just the highest or lowest on that page alone.
like this:
http://www.pro-football-reference.com/play-index/tiny/mYpV7
Clicking any sorting table gives just this page and not the "lowest" total in the chosen category
Posted on 29-Aug-09 at 7:39 pm | Permalink