Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #774730 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1472 pages

From Booklist
Based on the successful ESPN Pro Baseball Encyclopedia, the first edition of the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia has yards of statistics on every aspect of the professional game, from the earliest days in 1920 through the 2005 season. The majority of the book is a register of the full roster of pro football players and is divided into three areas: "The Player Register," "The Kicking Register," and "The Defense and Specialist Registers." These registers include alphabetical lists of all professional players, years and games played, teams, and important statistics like rushing, yards, tackles, interceptions, and more. The statistics don't end there. The starters, head coaches, games, playoffs, Super Bowls, all-time leaders, all-pro teams, awards, and the pro football draft all have sections with pertinent statistics, which are highly sought after by fantasy football players. Each section of statistics begins with a lengthy description of the data and abbreviations contained in the section and how to interpret them. The introduction discusses football history.

This is the first encyclopedia of football since Total Football (Total Sports Publishers) was published in 1999. While much of the data can be gleaned from various Web sites, the compilation in one source at an affordable price makes it an easy purchase. ESPN plans to publish annually, keeping the book up-to-date and affordable. This book puts the reality in fantasy football and should be in every public library and bar and grill--and on every football fanatic's coffee table. Sue Polanka
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Oh, Baby.
It has all the crap you'd expect for something like this, like the main stats for every player, a list of all the head coaches and their yearly records, hall of fame members (including yearly finalists), pro-bowl rosters, yearly standings (with more detailed stats than you'll easily find anywhere else) complete with a blurb on the season, and top-five finishers in a variety of categories.

It also has some unexpected treasures:
It has the scores of every game, which is a given, but has them broken down quarter-by-quarter, which I haven't seen before.

It gives the yearly offensive and defensive starters for each team (organized by team), which though not quite as cut-and-dried as it might seem, makes for interesting reading.

It gives a chronology of NFL records -- never seen that before -- eg. Van Buren's 1146 begat Brown's 1527, which begat himself five years later with 1863, which begat OJ's 2003, which begat Dickerson's 2105, which remains the record.

It lists each draft, year-by-year, team-by-team. (Duh.) But it picks up the ball that the Sporting News dropped in their Draft Encyclopedia. TSN gave themselves the subtitle "best picks, biggest busts", but it's ESPN that actually delivered the goods with a simple addition: after each name, they list the number of games the player played with that team, and in the NFL. If the player had 50 games with the team that drafted him, his name is in bold. A small thing, perhaps, but a huge improvement over nothing but the name.

I have two complaints, and would dock a half-star if it were possible.

The data in the player register - for each player, it spans the page -- is difficult to read and process. I greatly prefer the format used in Total Football.

The second is the year-by-year top five leaders in various categories. Some of the categories, they've made up themselves, like the one where you add ten points for each touchdown and add that to the yards rushing/receiving. Thanks, guys, but who cares who led the league in a category that nobody knew existed until now? The other beef is that the categories are laid out in a jumbled and confusing manner. For example, passing yards and passing td's are on separate lines and separate sides of the page, as are receptions and receiving yards. Guys, just take the top ten QB's, WR's, and RB's and list all their numbers in a line, then stick the honourable mentions at the bottom: "Jerome Bettis: 9 rushing td's".

Anyway, small gripes over a great book that is an incredible value even at the list price of $US24.95.

Incredible Value, A Must Have, Room For Improvement
I have been buying Football stat books since the 1970's so I feel like I can offer a well informed opinion. I have been waiting for a book like this since Total Football II became out of date and overall I am very pleased. This book raises the bar, it's got pretty much everything and then some, but there are some areas that need to be improved.

The player register is nice but I think they got it half-right, they had sections for kickers, defensive players & specialists, whick is great but when look at the offensive skill position players it is not easy to follow. Just put all the QB's in one section with thier own stat-template and do the same for RB's & WR's.

The game score, broken down by quarter with the basic game stats was a mind blowing surprise! thank you guys!

The year-by-year historical record is fine and clear to follow.

Here's my biggest complaint: The All-Time leaders by Lifetime & Season, why would they sort it by an "adjusted total" Sort the stats by the actual, factual number? If the editors want to add an adjusted stat to span eras, fine put it to the side of the real numbers. As for all of the "made up stats" put them in a special section, they do have a place here, and I would not mind seeing more of them, just please don't muddy the actual facts/stats with them.

The chronology of records is nice, very nice in fact, but there should still be room for a records section like the "NFL Record & Fact Book" has, only expanded to show the top 5-10, not just the top 3 like the NFL Book does.

The great performances section leaves alot to be desired, there is so much more that could be added there, there isn't much on great "single game" performances unless you sift through the scores section. A little cross refernce would be a big plus here.

Overall I give it 4 out of 5 stars, it is the best Pro Football Encyclopedia ever published and you should buy it ASAP, I just feel with some improvements this book could be off the charts special.

JKG

Would be 5 stars except for some errors I found
I have been interested in pro football stats since the late 1950s, so I ordered this new encyclopedia immediately (I have all the other ones referred to in this one). And as the authors said might might happen, once I got the book yesterday, I was up until the wee hours of the morning perusing it!

Physically, though a large paperback, this book opens flat nicely on a table. I found the format in which the stats were presented to be fine with me. Only stats and info for the NFL, AAFC, and the 1960 AFL are in the book. There was very useful info I hadn't seen in other encyclopedias, such as starters by position. However, there were no fuller team rosters, so it's still Neft et. al. for that. I also liked the scores of games being given by quarters.

I was really excited when I realized that game-by-game outstanding performances (100 yard rushing and receiving performances, and 300 yard--somewhat less in early seasons--passing performances) were presented starting in 1932 in the scores section. However, it was at this point that I began to notice editing errors, relating mostly to what team a player performed for. For example, Cliff Battles' 100 yd rushing day of Oct 1, 1933 is said to have occured while he played for the Chicago Cardinals! In 1934, a similar performance is attributed to his stint with the Detroit Lions! And all the outstanding performances for the LA Rams from 1946-49 are said to have occurred on the very same day and for the very same player(s) while they were playing for the LA Dons (e.g. Bob Waterfield threw for 312 yards for both teams on Dec 1, 1946). For the years prior to 1950, I found innumerable such errors, though nothing jumped out at me from 1950 on.

Some other errors I spotted are: the attribution of Johnny Strzykalski's season rushing stats to one Bob Steuber, a little used sub for the LA Dons, in the rankings for the 1947 season; the incorrect boldfacing of Jim Brown's long gain of 1964 as the NFL's longest, while his long gain of 1965, which did lead the NFL, is not boldfaced; and, in the season summary for 1933, the implication that there were no blacks in the NFL that year, when of course Joe Lillard was still playing and even gained 373 yards on 119 carries.

I found some of the adjusted stats interesting, but also quirky. For example, since 40 yards per interception are subtracted from passers "Total Adjusted Yards", George Blanda ended up contributing an adjusted NEGATIVE 134 yards to the Houston Oilers in 1962! He wasn't the only QB in that fix.

The intro to the book indicates that an update is to be published every year. If so, I hope the book is proofed again, and these and other errors are corrected. Then it will be on its way to a 5-star rank!