Summary

(No information yet)

License

unknown (from Weka repository)

Dependencies

Tags

arff slurped Weka

Attribute Types

Integer,Floating Point,String

Download

# Instances: 26 / # Attributes: 7
HDF5 (17.2 KB) XML CSV ARFF LibSVM Matlab Octave

Original Data Format

arff

Name

nflpass

Version mldata

0

Comment

Short Summary: Lists all-time NFL passers through 1994 by the NFL passing efficiency rating. Associated passing statistics from which this rating is computed are included.

More Details: The NFL describes how to compute its rating in its 1977 document "National Football League Passer Rating System" (410 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022-4444, (212) 758-1500) through the use of tables. No formula is explicitly stated for rating. But, examining the tables in the "National Football League Passer Rating System" one can infer that NFL passer rating is

[5(Completion Percentage-30)/6] + [10(Touchdown Percentage)/3] + [25(19-2(Interception Percentage))/12] + [25(Yards/Attempts-3)/6]

where it is understood that the values within each set of square brackets are truncated to be no smaller than zero and no larger than 475/12. This implies a minimal rating of 0 and a maximal rating of 475/3 or about 158.3. If

      30%  <     Completion Percentage   < 77.5%
      0%   <     Touchdown Percentage    < 11.875%
      0%   <     Interception Percentage <  9.5%
       3   <         Yards per Attempt   < 12.5,

which is true of most passers having a reasonable number of passing attempts, then the rating formula simplifies to

 [25 + 10(Completion Percentage) + 40(Touchdown Percentage)
 - 50(Interception Percentage) + 50(Yards/Attempt)]/12

(see Johnson (1993, 1994). Note that the weights on interception percentage and yards per attempt are greatest in magnitude, closely followed by touchdown percentage. The weight on completion percentage is a distant fourth in magnitude.

The dataset lists statistics for 26 players. The first 25 are the top 25 all-time career best rating leaders recognized by the NFL. The 26th player, Otto Graham, has statistics which include his performance in the All-America Football Conference (1946-1949) which is not recognized by the NFL. The statistics given are current through the 1994 regular season. Only passers with a minimum of 1,500 career passing attempts are included.

Note: By using unofficial 1995 season statistics which appeared in the Thursday, December 28 and the Wednesday, December 27 issues of the newspaper USA Today one can update the passers below through the 1995 regular season. (There could be, however, a new entry to the top 25 at the end of the 1995 season because of the 1,500 minimum passing attempt cutoff.)

While the dataset provided gives all-time best career ratings of players, rankings of passers are often cited for a current NFL season in newspapers (e.g. USA Today).

Different methods of ranking passers by a single numeric rating is also done by the NCAA (see Johnson (1994)) and the Canadian Football League (just the NFL method + 100/6? - this fits the data on p. 242 of Meserole (1995)).

As an interesting note on the use of the rating formula by NFL teams the following appeared in the Star-Tribune (Minneapolis newspaper) December 30, 1993 just before the last week of the 1993-1994 regular season:

"New York Jets coach Bruce Coslet dismissed suggestions he might not play Boomer Esiason on Sunday night at Houston if the game is meaningless. Terms of the trade last winter that brought the quarterback from Cincinnati called for the Bengals to receive a 1994 second-round draft pick if Esiason's passing rating is 89 or higher. Right now, his rating is 87.1."

Esiason played the game against Houston, Houston eliminating the Jets from post-season play, and finished the season with a 84.5 rating (_USA Today_, January 5, 1994, 4C).

Classroom Use of this Data: Using the NFL data from Meserole (1995), for which the above inequalities hold, one can uncover (at least approximately) the simplified rating formula using multiple regression. Students can be told that NFL rating is "based on performance standards established for completion percentage, average gain, touchdown percentage and interception percentage" (Meserole (1995)), but the actual formula for rating is not widely publicized. Once the rating formula is uncovered, one can see the relative weights that the NFL assigns to these four performance standards (see Barra and Neyer (1995) for an alternative). Also, by citing unusual passers who don't satisfy the above inequalities an instructor can remind students of the dangers of extrapolation when building regression models. Here are a few such unusual passers:

Name Attempts Completions Yards Touchdowns Interceptions Rating

Rypien 3 3 15 0 0 87.5 Marshall 1 1 81 1 0 158.3 Muster 1 0 0 0 1 0.0

The data for Arthur Marshall, a wide-receiver for Denver, and for Brad Muster, a full-back for Chicago are from the 1992 season. The data for quarterback Mark Rypien is for his performance at one point during the 1995 season (see USA Today, Thursday September 28, 1995, 9C).

One might also try tracking down the passing (not receiving!) records of Jerry Rice for the 1995 season as he apparently threw for a touchdown in the regular season finale.

Submitted by (and contact for questions): Roger W. Johnson Math/CS Department Carleton College Northfield, MN 55057-4001 rjohnson@carleton.edu

Distribution of the Dataset: The data from Meserole (1995) listed below may be freely distributed and used for nonprofit educational purposes such as teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, and research under fair use according to the copyright law encoded at 17 U.S.C. Section 107 et seq. (1982).

Variables (from left to right) in Dataset: Passing Attempts Passing Completions Passing Yards Touchdowns by Passing Interceptions NFL Rating (usually to the nearest tenth, sometimes to the nearest hundredth to eliminate ties that would result when only given to the nearest tenth) Name of NFL Player

References:

Barra, A. and Neyer, R. (1995), "When rating quarterbacks, yards per throw matters", The Wall Street Journal, Friday, November 24, B5.

Johnson, R. (1994), "Rating quarterbacks: An amplification", The College Mathematics Journal, vol. 25, no. 4, p. 340.

Johnson, R. (1993), "How does the NFL rate the passing ability of quarterbacks?", The College Mathematics Journal, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 451-453.

Meserole, M., editor, (1995), "The 1996 Information Please Sports Almanac", p. 265.

Information about the dataset CLASSTYPE: numeric CLASSINDEX: 6

Names

Passing_Attempts,Passing_Completions,Passing_Yards,Touchdowns_by_Passing,Interceptions,NFL_Rating,Name_of_NFL_Player,

Types

1. numeric
2. numeric
3. numeric
4. numeric
5. numeric
6. numeric
7. nominal:Bart_Starr,Bernie_Kosar,Boomer_Esiason,Brett_Favre,Dan_Fouts,Dan_Marino,Danny_White,Dave_Krieg,Fran_Tarkenton,Jeff_Hostetler,Jim_Everett,Jim_Kelly,Joe_Montana,Ken_Anderson,Ken_OBrien,Len_Dawson,Mark_Rypien,Neil_Lomax,Otto_Graham,Randall_Cunningham,Roger_Staubach,Sonny_Jurgensen,Steve_Young,Tony_Eason,Troy_Aikman,Warren_Moon

Data (first 10 data points)

Pass...	Pass...	Pass...	Touc...	Inte...	NFL_...	Name...
2429	1546	19869	140	68	96.8	Stev...
5391	3409	40551	273	139	92.3	Joe_...
6049	3604	45173	328	185	88.2	Dan_...
3942	2397	29527	201	143	85.8	Jim_...
2958	1685	22700	153	109	83.4	Roge...
4390	2562	32114	231	166	83.0	Dave...
3153	1817	22771	136	90	82.7	Neil...
4262	2433	32224	255	189	82.63	Sonn...
3741	2136	28711	239	183	82.56	Len_...
1580	983	10412	70	53	82.2	Bret...
...	...	...	...	...	...	...

Description

A gzip'ed tar containing StatLib datasets (statlib-20050214.tar.gz, 12,785,582 Bytes)

URLs

(No information yet)

Publications

Data Source

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/datasets/

Measurement Details

Usage Scenario

revision 1

by mldata on 2010-11-06 10:00

No one has posted any comments yet. Perhaps you would like to be the first?

Leave a comment

This item was downloaded 2559 times and viewed 1814 times.

No Tasks yet on dataset statlib-20050214 nflpass