99 Stats Before Kickoff

Introduction

People who have read my work as a sports statistics blogger usually ask me the same question: How do you come up with this stuff?

My answer is typically the same: I don’t know, it just comes to me.

That’s the truth. I honestly don’t know how and why these different sports stats come into my brain, but they do. I have often described it as a blessing and a curse. I guess I am one of those people who has this propensity to look at things with a slant towards the numerical.

At an early age, my dad, who played recreational softball and basketball (and was a bowler) would take me to his games. As a youngster, I started out as a bat boy for his Eagle Hotel (a bar that sponsored their team) softball team. A few years later, my dad taught me how to keep score for a baseball game and how to score bowling. That’s my best recollection of how this sports statistics interest began.

In addition to inventing games with dice and cards, and playing sports board games, I started keeping stats and records at every opportunity. I’d play games by tossing a rubber ball against the front steps of our house and kept stats and records of those sessions. One year I even kept stats for my dad’s city league basketball team… I mean full-blown stats: shot percentage, rebounds, assists. It may have been the only time in the history of Racine (Wis.) city league basketball that a team had a full-time statistician.

As I ventured into junior high, high school and college, my interest in sports and statistics grew. I kept stats for my junior high football team, got a part-time job for a couple of years as a scorekeeper for adult recreational basketball games, and kept my stats of all my athletic endeavors. In college, I ended up keeping stats for the local radio sports announcer for my junior college’s football games. That led the following year to an offer to become the school’s unofficial Sports Information Director keeping stats on baseball, football and basketball and keeping local and regional media updated on the school’s teams.

In the mid-1980s, I tried my hand at freelance writing and starting submitting stats items to Inside Sports magazine for their Numbers column, which looked at stats for college and professional sports. After some time, I became a regular contributor to the column, making $25 per submission. I then shot off a letter to my local newspaper’s sports editor proposing a weekly column on sports statistics. He bit. That was the birth of Stats on Tapp. Eventually, I was able to syndicate the column to a national company, Universal Press Syndicate, although it ended up being a short-lived venture.

Disappointed that the Stats on Tapp column wouldn’t be sweeping the nation, I got a reprieve when an editor from the Washington Post called and asked if I would contribute weekly stats items to their newspaper. I was back in business. At about this same time, I sent a letter to then-Milwaukee Brewers owner Bud Selig asking if there were any jobs available with the team in the area of stats. I got a nice response from Mr. Selig stating there was nothing available, but that they would keep my resume on file. A week later I got a call from Terry Ann Petersen, who ran the scoreboard, inviting me to interview for a stats position they had on the scoreboard crew. I got the job and went on to a 20-plus-years part-time job as a Brewers Scoreboard statistician.

I tell you all this so that you will see that sports statistics truly has been (and continues to be) something that I love to do and have a passion for. Fast forward to 2011 and a good friend, Jim Magruder, began bugging me to start writing a blog, a journey he had decided to take to help him try to publish a novel he had written. As he began writing a weekly blog on tips for aspiring writers, I took the plunge and decided to resurrect Stats on Tapp in blog form. The decision was lethal; I got addicted to blogging. What started as a once-a-week hobby, went to three times a week, and when I found myself out of work in the spring of 2012, I started to publish sports statistics blogs daily. Whether it was from my own website at www.statsontapp.com or submissions to popular sports websites like Bleacher Report or BallHyped, I was using my down time as an unemployed middle-aged man (okay, maybe a little older than middle-aged) and turning my attention to staying busy as a sports statistics blogger.

The idea for a book has been in the back of my mind for quite some time. Jim Magruder had mentioned it as something I should consider several times, and another friend, Bob Gullberg, was even more enthusiastic, telling me that you have to put all this in a book. The book process began in January, 2013. I had posted over 100 blogs during the 2012 NFL season and felt that a book on NFL stats was the perfect direction to take.

That’s what you have in your hands… 99 Stats before Kick-off. It is the culmination of a lifelong love for sports statistics. Before you start into the meat of the book, let me offer you a look inside what you are about to read.

All of these 99 items were published as part of my blog. What I did was go back and re-do the research to make sure that the stat, as originally published, would be up-to-date through the 2012 NFL season. All of the items are current as of the completion of the ’12 season. Most of them are about 300-50 words in length. Not only will you get a nice review of the 2012 season, but I think you’ll take a little trip back in time for a history lesson on the NFL, and some of the stats will provide a look into the future of the league via trends, etc.

A lot of people do not enjoy stats. I’m perfectly fine with that. But one thing that I wanted to do in my career as a sports statistician (or maybe better stated, sports analyst) was to make sure that I wasn’t just posting numbers. As the tagline on my website states:Sports Stats ‘on Tapp’ is a sports statistics blog published with a focus on stats that go beyond the numbers.That is really important to me. I want my items to be informative and entertaining. I want the reader to say, I didn’t know that. To my way of thinking, anyone can quote stats on touchdowns, wins and losses, etc., but not everyone can dig a little deeper to find stats that the average fan is typically not reading or hearing. I hope I am that voice.

My stat items typically do not come with a lot of analysis. I would much prefer to throw the numbers out there and let the reader come to their own conclusions. There are, however, times when I journey out of this comfort zone. In the chapters titled, Special Stats and In my Opinion, I’ve included a few times when I became more of an analyst that normal. In the Special Stats chapter, I’ve included a pair of stats I developed to look at what effective offensive and defensive units might look like based on my stat formulas. In my Opinion is just what the chapter offers, my opinion on a few topics. Let me know what you think about these chapters.

Finally, you will see a few items with the SIX STATS… heading. This was more of a branding idea I had concerning my blog. For quite some time I would publish blogs on Friday, but they would all be SIX STATS… items that focused on a particular player, team, event, stat, etc.; what you got from me was six stats that helped define the topic. There were probably more than six stats that could have written, but it was a branding decision to bring a focus to the blog.

I think that’s all for now. If you’re a big NFL fan, I think you’ll find this book to be fun, but I also hope that you will find it to be insightful to a sport you love. I think you will find stats that you didn’t know on each page of this book.

Enjoy!

COACHES

1. The NFL's winningest coaches... by the alphabet!

When the New York Giants defeated the New Orleans Saints, 52-27, on December 9, 2012, it was the 150th career win for Giants coach Tom Coughlin. But it also was monumental in that the victory put Coughlin on top of the list for most coaching wins by an NFL coach with the last name starting with the letter C.

Coughlin now sits atop the list of most wins by a C coach with 151, surpassing former Steelers coach Bill Cowher, who had 149 career wins.

The only active coach on the list below is St. Louis Rams head man Jeff Fisher; he has 149 career wins, most by any coach whose last name starts with an F. Former San Diego head coach Norv Turner leads coaches with the last name starting with T, but Turner may not be adding to those totals any time soon since he was fired as Chargers coach after the 2012 season.

For a little light-hearted fun, here's a look at the winningest coaches in NFL history... based on the alphabet.

A: George Allen, 116

B: Paul Brown, 213

C: Bill Cowher, 149

D: Tony Dungy, 139

E: Weeb Ewbank, 130

F: Jeff Fisher, 142

G: Bud Grant, 158

H: George Halas, 318

I: Lindy Infante, 36

J: Jimmy Johnson, 80

K: Chuck Knox, 186

L: Tom Landry, 250

M: Jim Mora, 125

N: Chuck Noll, 193

O: Steve Owen, 151

P: Bill Parcells, 172

Q: (None)

R: Dan Reeves, 190

S: Don Shula, 328

T: Norv Turner, 103

U: Rube Ursella, 12

V: Dick Vermeil, 120

W: Bill Walsh, 92

X: (None)

Y: Swede Youngstrom, 4

Z: Jim Zorn, 12

2. NFL head coaches: Oakland Raiders have had most head coaches this century

Eight teams enter the '13 NFL season with new head coaches at the helm. They are: Arizona (Bruce Arians), Buffalo (Doug Marrone), Chicago (Mark Trestman), Cleveland (Rob Chudzinski), Jacksonville (Gus Bradley), Kansas City (Andy Reid), Philadelphia (Chip Kelly) and San Diego (Mike McCoy).

For the Bills and Browns, this is the seventh head coach since 2000. That, however, does not top the league; the Raiders hired Dennis Allen in 2012, their eighth head coach this century.

With the firing of Andy Reid in Philadelphia, the New England Patriots are the only franchise to have had the same coach this century. Andy Reid had been the Eagles' top man since 1999; New England’s Bill Belichick took over as the Pats' head coach in 2000.

Following are the number of head coaches each of the NFL teams have had since 2000.

8: Oakland

7: Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Miami, Washington

6: Atlanta, Kansas City, San Francisco, St. Louis

5: Arizona, Jacksonville

4: Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Minnesota, New York Jets, San Diego, Tampa Bay

3: Carolina, Chicago, Cincinnati, Seattle

2: Baltimore, Green Bay, Houston, New Orleans, New York Giants, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Tennessee

1: New England

The Patriots' Belichick is obviously the current head coach with the longest seniority in the league. Belichick has 208 regular season games under his belt as the New England head man. Here are the current coaches with 80 or more games at the helm of their current teams.

Coach, Team, Games

Bill Belichick, New England, 208

Marvin Lewis, Cincinnati, 160

Tom Coughlin, New York Giants, 144

Mike McCarthy, Green Bay, 112

Gary Kubiak, Houston, 112

Sean Payton, New Orleans, 96

Mike Tomlin, Pittsburgh, 96

Mike Smith, Atlanta, 80

John Harbaugh, Baltimore, 80

Here's a quick trivia question for you: Can you name the head coach for the Patriots before Belichick?

Here's another trivia question to test your knowledge of the 32 current head coaches in the NFL: Can you name the four current NFL head coaches who are the winningest coach in their franchises' history?

Trivia answers: The head coach of the Patriots prior to Belichick was Pete Carroll. The four current head coaches who are already the winningest coach in their teams' history are Belichick (Patriots), Marvin Lewis (Bengals), Gary Kubiak (Texans) and Mike Smith (Falcons).

3. Most coaching wins without a Super Bowl appearance

Last year we not only had a first with two coaching brothers facing each other in the Super Bowl, but we also had two coaches making their Super Bowl debuts in that February 3rd contest.

Baltimore’s John Harbaugh had 54 regular season wins prior to his first Super Bowl coaching assignment, while little brother Jim had 23 wins in his first two seasons at the helm of the 49ers.

In the Super Bowl era (since 1966) we have several coaches who have won 70 or more games but have never made it to the Super Bowl. Topping