Sports Reference Blog

Earlier this season we announced our partnership with Sportradar to bring advanced offensive statistics to Pro Football Reference. We are happy to announce that for the 2019 season and beyond, we have now added additional advanced passing statistics to help provide context and key breakdowns for the quarterbacks around the league.

We can use MVP candidate Lamar Jackson as an example of the new statistics provided in the Advanced Passing table of quarterback pages. In the Accuracy tab, you'll now see batted passes and spikes in addition to previously added stats such as throwaways and bad throws. We also show passes on target and on target percentage, which ignores spikes and throwaways. Jackson has a 75.4 on target percentage in 2019.

In the Pressure tab of the Advanced Passing table, in addition to previously provided stats such as times blitzed, times hit, and scrambles, we also have pocket time for 2019. Jackson in 2019 has had on average 2.6 seconds in the pocket between the snap and throwing the ball or pressure collapsing the pocket.

In the Play Type tab of the Advanced Passing table, we provide breakdowns for run-pass option plays and play-action situations. Jackson has run 106 RPO plays this season, passing on 51 and rushing on his own for 52 of them. Jackson has run 87 play-action plays, throwing for 559 yards on those plays.

Finally, we already provided air yards information, but in order to paint a more complete picture we are now showing both intended air yards, which includes all pass attempts, and completed air yards. That information is displayed in the dedicated Air Yards tab of the Advanced Passing table.

In addition to displaying this information at the individual level, we have also implemented this tabbed approach on the team advanced stats page. As a team, the Saints lead the league in on target percentage at 81.9%. In terms of pocket time, the Chargers, Chiefs and Bengals trail with just an average of 2.2 seconds. Unsurprisingly, the Ravens and Cardinals have both run over 150 RPO plays, while no other team has even 100.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Pro Football Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following PFR!

As part of our partnership with StatsBomb, FBref has made more advanced statistics available for players in the major international leagues. We launched expected goals data a couple of weeks ago, and you can read more in depth about the process that goes into calculating those figures at our xG explainer page.

A more recent big addition to the advanced stats we carry is a new Passing table, which tracks total number of passes attempted and completed, as well as a breakdown by pass distance. Other passing information includes key passes (passes that directly lead to a shot attempt), breakdown of left-footed and right-footed passes, through balls, and passes that enter the third of the pitch closest to the goal. In the 2018-19 UEFA Champions League, among players with at least 150 long pass attempts (25+ yards), only Sergio Busquets of Barcelona and Manuel Akanji successfully completed 90% of their long passes.

A new Playing Time table includes basic stats such as minutes per match as well as breakdowns by starts and substitutions. For seasons where we have match reports, we are also able to display points earned in standings per match played, goals scored and allowed by team while the player is on the pitch, and a plus/minus stat using that information. For example, in the 2018-19 English Premier League, Virgil van Dijk and Aymeric Laporte were tied for the league lead among non-goalkeepers in plus/minus, with their teams scoring 67 more goals than their opponents when they were on the pitch.

We have also added a Miscellaneous table that provides season-level statistics we were already providing in match reports such as fouls committed and drawn, offsides, crosses, tackles and interceptions. In 2019 Major League Soccer, Jorge Moreira of Portland led the league with 69 tackles. Zlatan Ibrahimović led the league in offsides committed, 15 more than 2nd place Sam Johnson.

You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

With 6 new debuts this season, there have now been exactly 500 people in NFL history to be credited as head coach of a NFL team. Many of those coaches had to work their way up the ranks or prove their success elsewhere before getting their chance at the top position in the NFL. For a while, Pro-Football-Reference had full coaching history on the pages of modern coaches such as Bill Belichick, so you could trace his rise from a special assistant on the 1975 Colts to where he is today. However, we did not include that information for many historical coach profiles until now, as we have now filled in the coaching history of every head coach in NFL history where applicable.

While in today's environment it's more common to hire a coach with NFL assistant experience over a college coach, in the past many great coaches jumped directly from college to the NFL. Paul Brown rose from nearly a decade coaching at Massillon Washington High School to three years at Ohio State, and following two years coaching the Naval Station Great Lakes team got the call to coach the nascent Cleveland franchise. Sid Gillman was a head coach at Miami of Ohio and Cincinnati before getting his first NFL head coaching spot with the Los Angeles Rams.

The addition of this information also helps fill out NFL coaching trees, as displayed by the Employed and Employed By tables on our coach pages. Looking at Brown's Employed table, he employed future Hall of Fame coaches Weeb Ewbank (as a tackles coach) and Bill Walsh (as a QB and WR coach). A common narrative today is how the assistants of Bill Belichick have not gone on to solid head coaching careers, and similar things were said about Vince Lombardi's coaching branches, which included folks like Bill Austin, Norb Hecker and Mike McCormack.

Assistant coaches did not become the norm until around the 1940s, although even in the early days of the NFL there were cases such as Dim Batterson of coaches assisting before rising to the top post. In those days player-coaches were common, and most of them never went on to a different coaching position, which is why those coaching history tables will mostly remain bare. There were exceptions, such as Bob Dove who was a player-coach for the Chicago Rockets and would go on to take assistant positions with the Lions and Bills before becoming a long-time assistant for Youngstown State. College coaches were also common in the early days of the NFL, such as Ed Robinson, who began his coaching career way back in 1896 with Nebraska before eventually coaching the Providence Steam Roller for one season.

We give thanks to the Professional Football Researchers Association and the work of John Maxymuk who had done extensive research on NFL head coaching history, along with additional newspaper verification by Alex Bonilla. In the future we may also fill in the coaching history of offensive and defensive coordinators we are currently lacking that information for. If you have any corrections or additional information to share or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Pro Football Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following PFR!

Major League Soccer's first season was in 1996, and since then the league has expanded to 24 teams playing in this 2019 season, and has the Seattle Sounders and Toronto FC preparing to face off in the MLS Cup on November 10. (Editor's note: congratulations to the Sounders on their 3-1 victory and the 2019 MLS title!) With that, FBref is happy to announce that we now have match reports and player match logs available for the league's entire history.

The first MLS Cup was held on October 20, 1996, where DC United defeated LA Galaxy 3-2 in extra time. Our reports include substitutions, cards issued, time played, goals, assists and missed penalty kicks.

With the addition of match reports comes having match logs for all players in MLS history. Carlos Ruiz had an amazing debut MLS season in 2002 for the LA Galaxy, leading the league with 24 regular season goals. Ruiz's 2002 match log shows you quickly that he scored in each of his first 4 games of the season. We also have his postseason logs, which included 3 multi-goal games en route to Los Angeles' MLS Cup victory over New England that season.

We want to give a big thanks to SportDirect, Howard Hamilton and Jay Hutchinson for their work and research done for this particular project. FBref will continue to expand its historical offerings for the various leagues we currently cover. You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

Basketball-Reference has added 2019-20 NBA player projections, using our Simple Projection System, which is adapted from Tom Tango's Marcel the Monkey Forecasting System.

Since we're not controlling substitution patterns, all projections are for per-36 minutes statistics. In addition to the full list of player projections linked above, we are also displaying them on individual player pages. Please use these responsibly and enjoy! Also, take the time to check out some other features you may be unaware of in the site's Frivolities section.

Sports-Reference has added a feature to tables that will make it a lot easier to compare teams and players in an easily scannable fashion. Now, when you select a row on a table, a popup will appear with a button: "Show Only Selected Rows". Highlight the rows you want to isolate, and once you're ready, click the button. The site will then fade out the unselected rows so the only rows displayed are the ones you highlighted. If you want to return to viewing the full table, just click on the "Show All Rows" button.

This feature applies to any tables that don't have row summing capabilities. This will work on both desktop and mobile. You can see a video of the feature in action at Baseball-Reference's Twitter account. You can contact us through our feedback form if you have any questions or suggestions.

Last month on the Sports Reference Blog we posted about the addition of advanced statistics at the individual level on offense and defense for 2018 and 2019. We've followed up on that addition and also calculated those advanced statistics at the team level and made season tables to make league-wide comparisons easier. You can find team advanced offensive statistics by going to the Other tab on the league season page and clicking on the Advanced Stats link. Here's a link to 2019 team advanced offensive statistics.

Team advanced defensive statistics can be accessed by going to the main Team Defense page, which is linked in the Defensive Stats tab of the league season page. Here's a direct link to the Team Advanced Defense table for 2019. Some team statistics we include here that aren't currently calculated at the individual level include blitz rate (blitzes per dropback), QB knockdown rate (knockdowns per pass attempt) and pressure rate (pressures per dropback).

Also, we were already including advanced offensive stats at the game level in box scores, but we've also recently added advanced defensive stats in box scores as well. For example, here's a link to the Advanced Defense table for the Chiefs-Colts Week 5 matchup. A reminder that advanced statistics across the site don't fully update until the Wednesday morning following the weekend's games.

We are continuing to expand our statistical coverage for recent seasons, so we're always open to feedback on how to best serve what you most want to know. If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact us through our feedback form or Pro Football Reference's official Twitter account. Thanks for following PFR!

And then there were five...

Earlier this year when we announced that we'd filled in the final pieces of missing information for our 1984-85 NBA Box Scores, we also printed a list of seven games from the 1983-84 season that were missing bits of info here and there, such as offensive rebounds or turnovers.

We're happy to announce that we've completed two of these games:

The Bulls against the Jazz on November 23, 1983 in Las Vegas. Ostensibly because it was played in a neutral location where newspaper coverage was lacking, full statistical details on this game have never appeared in the public sphere...until now. We would like to thank Kristen Deahl, Matt Scull and Will Weaver with the Chicago Bulls for their assistance in adding this. Thanks to their help, we hope to soon have full box score details on every game in Bulls history up on the site.

The Celtics against the Knicks on March 22, 1984 at Madison Square Garden. Thank you to researcher extraordinaire Sean Burrill for finding the missing details on this game.

As a reminder, we have a box scores with player points, FGM and FTM for every game in NBA history, but we are sometimes missing other categories (especially blocks, steals and turnovers) for games played in 1983-84 and earlier. If you're curious for a more detailed look at our game-by-game statistical coverage, please check out our coverage map here.

If you have further details on any games we're missing any stats for, please let us know.

FBref hopes to be a one-stop shop for international football statistics, and another big step towards that goal has been made with the addition of various European domestic cups and supercups. The following competitions are now covered by FBref:

ENGLAND

* EFL Cup (since 2014-15)
* FA Cup (since 2014-15)
* FA Community Shield (since 2015)

GERMANY

* DFB-Pokal (since 2014-15)
* DFL-Supercup (since 2014)
* DFB-Pokal Frauen (since 2019-20)

FRANCE

* Coupe de France (since 2014-15)
* Coupe de la Ligue (since 2014-15)
* Trophée des Champions (since 2014)

SPAIN

* Copa del Rey (since 2014-15)
* Supercopa de España (since 2015)

ITALY

* Coppa Italia (since 2014-15)
* Supercoppa Italiana (since 2014)

Player statistics from domestic cups can be viewed in the All Competitions table of player pages, either by selecting the Domestic Cups tab or the All Expanded tab, which will show their stats for every competition we currently cover. You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.

FBref continues to expand the variety of competitions covered on the site, as we are now announcing the addition of the following youth leagues:

* Premier League 2 - Division 1 (U23)
* Premier League 2 - Division 2 (U23)
* A-Junioren Bundesliga (U19)
* B-Junioren Bundesliga (U17)

One name Bundesliga enthusiasts may be hearing for years to come is Youssoufa Moukoko, who has scored 15 goals through the first 7 games of the A-Junioren Bundesliga season for Dortmund. He moved up to A after scoring 46 goals and 37 goals in the last 2 B-Junioren Bundesliga seasons. Mind you, he will celebrate his 15th birthday later this year.

From the English youth leagues, Harry Wilson led PL 2 - Div 1 in goals scored in 2016-17, as well as finishing 3rd the following season. This year he's playing at the top level with Bournemouth on loan from Liverpool and already has 3 goals on his 2019-20 ledger.

Youth league statistics will appear in a separate table on player pages when applicable. You can keep up with the latest additions of competitions coverage and new features here on the Sports Reference Blog, or by signing up for the This Week in Sports Reference mailing list. Feel free to send us any questions or suggestions through our feedback form or FBref's official Twitter account.