Announcing The Start Of Random NFL Research Summer – Fill The Sports Void By Getting Answers To Questions You’d Never Think To Ask

I have one goal for this very second until the first awkward kickoff in September. Get you through the post NBA/NHL summer slog until at least the end of July for the Olympics. I know Game 6 is tonight and hopefully Connor McDavid can give us all the gift of a Stanley Cup Game 7, but we need to start thinking about the long term here. And I have a plan to make it happen.

Random NFL research projects.

Sometimes a break in the action gives us a chance to look back and explore uncharted topics. I’ve spent the better part of two months overhauling my NFL stats database and am now ready to take it out for a spin. I’m talking game level data for every single game since 1920. Offense. Defense. Special Teams. If it’s on a Pro-football reference game page, I got it. Spreads, officials, temperature, coin flip results. Everything. 

Here’s some research ventures I’m set to run the proper statistics on so far. Still getting the juices flowing so feel free to shoot me some ides of your own. 

– “So, You Made The NFL…”: Blog series focusing on a single fringe player who has an absurd amount of transactions on their career transaction log. You won’t believe it when I tell you the record is 114. 

– Breakdown of the statistically best and worst jersey numbers. Spoiler, 0 is way better than 00.

– The analytics of challenging – rank best/worst coaches in challenging, what types of plays most likely to get overturned, stuff like that

– Coin Toss analytics (I mean, why not?)

– Best NFL nicknames (players/coaches)

– Best fantasy football players going back to 1920 

– What’s the perfect temperature for a football game?

– Has any player scored every possible point on a single play? (1,2,3, and 6) I haven’t looked this up yet so I hope someone has otherwise the entire blog will be “no”.

Also excited to mix in some Twitter AMA (about football stats) sessions so if you have some burning questions you want answered, send them my way. Again I have data on every game, all 500 plus coaches and 25,000 plus players. Let’s get weird and have some fun. 

So get ready to learn the most entertaining useless NFL facts imaginable. Whatever it takes to get us through summer.

@Stathole