Sports Reference Blog

Games After Byes Added to Play Index Search

Posted by Mike Lynch on October 4, 2016

We recently made a cool addition the Team Game Finder in the Pro Football Reference Play Index. You can now customize your game searches to isolate (or exclude) games played immediately after bye weeks.

Since the bye week was instituted in 1990, the Eagles and Broncos have the NFL's best records coming out of the bye (21-6 each). They've had 27 games in 26 seasons with a bye because in 1993, every team had two bye weeks. The link also shows that, since 1990, teams coming off their bye week have a 429-394-3 record, which is over .500, but perhaps not as strong as you might expect. Home records in general seem to be nearly identical to home records for teams coming off of byes, but the bye week really seems to help road teams. Through 2016 Week 4, road teams have a .421 win percentage since 1990. However, over that same span, road teams coming off of their bye week have a .461 win percentage.

You can add the "bye week" criteria to your searches by utilizing the "miscellaneous criteria" section of the search form.

We hope you enjoy this addition. Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Related posts:

  1. Search By Day Added to Basketball Reference Play Index
  2. Career Game Number Search Added to Pro Football Reference Play Index
  3. Search Our Stats Using the Play Index
  4. Search Our Stats Using the Play Index
  5. Search Our Stats Using the Play Index

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 4th, 2016 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Announcement, Data, Features, History, Play Index, Pro-Football-Reference.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Games After Byes Added to Play Index Search”

  1. Mark Growcott Says: October 5th, 2016 at 4:25 am

    Thanks Mike, you mention the Eagles' impressive record following a Bye, this includes a streak of 13 consecutive seasons (1999-2011, all under Andy Reid) where they had a win following their Bye Week. A closer look though reveals that only 3 of those 13 games were on the road and only 3 times did they face a Division opponent (once on the road). They also only faced 1 team who was also coming off a Bye themselves and that was the Falcons in 2008.

    Conversely we rarely hear how teams fared prior to their Bye Week. The Bills went 13 consecutive seasons (2000-2012) without a win heading into their Bye Week, another likely streak without parallel. Perhaps you could also add this option under misc "Game preceded Bye Week". :-)

    Interesting to also note that in Week 8 of the 2011 season we had 6 teams all off at the same time each with a winning record. This is the only instance as many as 6 teams have each enjoyed their Bye Week with a winning record. We have had a few instances of 5 teams before.