Semi OT: Using Pro Football Reference Play Index

[BhndEnemyLines20]

I was thinking this may be a useful helper thread for folks.

To varying degrees, I think we all know pro-football-reference is the king of stats websites for the NFL (and for other sports: baseball-reference is even more awesome). I only discovered the "Play Index" search tools a couple months ago, so I'm still learning the ins and outs.

What I was thinking for this thread, is that people post questions, answers, useful tips, etc. that they have about using the site.

[BhndEnemyLines20]

To start, does anyone know how to search for stats for part of a season?

For example, I want to know which RBs led the league for weeks 11-17 of last season (Gregg Rosenthal said Gus Edwards was 4th in that span, and I just was curious how the whole rankings shook out). Is there a neat way to do this with the play index?

I can look up leading rushers for the whole season using the "Player Season Finder," or all the individual RB stats for all games in those weeks using "Player Game Finder", but does anyone know if I can produce a table of the stats for all RBs within just those (or any other) weeks?

Or do I just have to manually add up?

[JimZipCode]

For example, I want to know which RBs led the league for weeks 11-17 of last season (Zrebiec said Gus Edwards was 4th in that span, and I just was curious how the whole rankings shook out). Is there a neat way to do this with the play index?

I can look up leading rushers for the whole season using the "Player Season Finder," or all the individual RB stats for all games in those weeks using "Player Game Finder", but does anyone know if I can produce a table of the stats for all RBs within just those (or any other) weeks?

Or do I just have to manually add up?

Boom:

http://pfref.com/tiny/2KFIT

Choose Show/Hide Search Form to see how I filled it in. I navigated to "Player Finder – Game", and then filled in the search box as you see there.

Looks like Zerb was wrong; or rather, he didn't look closely enough. Gus is listed at #4, but he's tied with the 3rd-place guy.

---

There was a poster who was very active last season, who was magic with PFR searches. Absolute magic. I want to say it was Organized Chaos? Search thru his old posts, you'll find a bunch of links like the one above, which will teach a variety of possible searches. I've used PFR for many years; but after interacting with him, I stole a bunch of tricks from his posts, and upped my game considerably.

[Ortizer]

Boom:

http://pfref.com/tiny/2KFIT

Choose Show/Hide Search Form to see how I filled it in. I navigated to "Player Finder – Game", and then filled in the search box as you see there.

Looks like Zerb was wrong; or rather, he didn't look closely enough. Gus is listed at #4, but he's tied with the 3rd-place guy.

---

There was a poster who was very active last season, who was magic with PFR searches. Absolute magic. I want to say it was Organized Chaos? Search thru his old posts, you'll find a bunch of links like the one above, which will teach a variety of possible searches. I've used PFR for many years; but after interacting with him, I stole a bunch of tricks from his posts, and upped my game considerably.

Yeah. OrganizedChaos21

Hope he's back this year.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

[BhndEnemyLines20]

Boom:

http://pfref.com/tiny/2KFIT

Choose Show/Hide Search Form to see how I filled it in. I navigated to "Player Finder – Game", and then filled in the search box as you see there.

Looks like Zerb was wrong; or rather, he didn't look closely enough. Gus is listed at #4, but he's tied with the 3rd-place guy.

---

There was a poster who was very active last season, who was magic with PFR searches. Absolute magic. I want to say it was Organized Chaos? Search thru his old posts, you'll find a bunch of links like the one above, which will teach a variety of possible searches. I've used PFR for many years; but after interacting with him, I stole a bunch of tricks from his posts, and upped my game considerably.

Yeah. OrganizedChaos21

Hope he's back this year.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

Awesome thank you! I somehow totally missed the "Cumulative season games" option, it's now very obvious that's what I should've done

Will definitely poke through OrganizedChaos21's posts, thanks both of you for the recommendation. Hope this thread gets reborn whenever a new question comes up though!

Also I unintentionally depreciated Zrebiec, it wasn't him but Gregg Rosenthal in his Lamar hype article who said Edwards was 4th (I've since edited my original post to reflect that).