Introducing Sports Staturday - January 18, 2025
Welcome to Sports Staturday.
For those who've followed my weekly NFL Sad Stats blogs every regular season week for the past three seasons, this is sort of my new spin off. A weekly fun-read blog blending mostly original stats with takes delivered early Saturday morning to your favorite ad scrolling app on your phone.
Friday nights are generally slow so why not use this little Saturday morning reprieve to take a fun walk through a hodgepodge of sports stats from the past week? Some insightful, some irreverent. But hopefully always entertaining while you sip your coffee or mimosa to recover from whatever self-indulgence you chose last night. That's the idea here.
I've been working hard behind the scenes to procure as much sports data as possible in order to do something like Sports Staturday. There's a long way to go, but I am pretty solid in NFL and NBA and close to finalizing box score data for some 113,000 NCAA Men's basketball games going back 20 years. Should be all set for some fun lookups come March. NHL and college football are next in line. Any piece of relevant data on every game page needs to be in my database. Saving MLB for last as I'm pretty sure I'll need to buy a majority share of AWS to house it all. That's one of those jokes that after typing out I realize might not actually be a joke. But one way or another, I'll get to baseball stats.
Anyway - sorry for the preamble. But I want to show I've put thought into this idea. Sports Staturday should be like your One Saturday Morning when you were a kid. Except, an adult version where you hold a Bloody Mary instead of a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. Let's have some fun. Look at a graph or two. And get ready to take on the weekend.
This is Sports Staturday.
Tyrese Martin's -56 +/- is actually not the worst +/- in NBA history
Plus/minus is one of those basketball stats that you say is skewed when it's bad for a player you like on your team. That's bad news for Tyrese Martin. He's probably not anyone's favorite player. Even on the Nets. Sure, sometimes you get a negative +/- because you play in place of Steph Curry or Jokic. But -56 is bad. In fact, only two players have ever been worse. Manny Harris and Scoot Henderson. Here's a nice little list in order of worst from top-down.
Tough look for Scoot showing up twice towards the top of the list including the worst of all-time. But while a lot of recent Trail Blazers appear above, fans can at least reference the many OKC players from a few years back as a path for hope. Maybe Anfernee Simons can be that guy (had a -36 Thursday night).
Let's do one more NBA tidbit before moving on the NFL Divisional Round.
Four of the top-five players with the most total minutes played so far in the NBA are on the Knicks
Peak Thibs. And for those wondering, KAT is sitting around 1,318 too which is no slouch. I know how this story always ends, but I absolutely love this. Playing your starters into the ground might be the smart thing to do, but it's the romantic thing to do. In a world where players show up for work with all the consistency of a high school senior after getting a college acceptance letter, it's nice to know when I turn on a Knicks game, the boys will be out there playing. Even if they're sneaking hits of oxygen in their 14 seconds of rest while Thibs has his back turned. Sure, they'll be in the glue factory after they collapse in Game 5 of the second round, but at least they'll be the only team that can say they gave it all.
Seriously though, the Knicks really are a fun team to watch. Especially at home. MSG is top of class in terms of fan energy. The only other NBA fandom on their level that jumps to mind is Sacramento. There's got to be something though to fans knowing when they go to the game they won't be short changed. Anyway, as an absolute NBA casual, I look forward to rooting for the Knicks after my Bulls lose their annual play-in 8-seed game championship. Can't wait for the three-peat this spring.
Yeah, I know. There's football on today.
Matt Stafford's career high in passing was in a 31-degree (19 wind chill) windy game on the road
Lot of talk about Stafford not being able to play in the snow. Call me crazy, but I'm not buying it. I think he comes to play vs the Eagles regardless if they win or not. There's nothing to worry about with the snow or cold. Sure, his last snow game in Philly was an absolute disaster, but if there's reason to believe Stafford can't play in the snow, then it really should follow that he can't play in the cold either.
But it doesn't. Check out this simple rundown of his passing yards of games by temperature. Here's what the log shows for his tenure in Detroit in outdoor games:
That top blip came in the Matt Flynn game in which Stafford threw five touchdowns which just so happened to be the second fewest touchdowns thrown by a guy named Matt in that very game. Six for Flynn, in an all-time fraud game he would take to the bank. Good for him. I didn't run the proper query to confirm, but I'll just go ahead and say 11 total touchdowns by guys named Matt is the single game record.
As for the graph above - I'm seeing no correlation. If anything, a slight downtick as temps increase. But really, it's all expected variance.
How about in LA? Did the warm climate make a hard man from Detroit soft?
The elephant in the graph here represents Week 16 of this season. 110 yards in the 23 degree New York winter. But then again, he only threw 19 passes and they won by double digits (I mean, it is the Jets). So despite this being the only game he played while a Ram in freezing conditions, I'm actually tempted to zag and take the Rams moneyline. The Eagles are a great team, but it feels like any little bit of adversity can lead them to pout and crumble. Watch out for an upset.
Either way - Matt Stafford can still throw in cold weather. There's no correlation to suggest lower temps bring him down.
Lamar Jackson on the other hand…
Now that's a correlation. I took out all his early games where he only came in for a few throws here and there his rookie season. But there's definitely something going on here when temps are 50 degrees or colder. Also 70 degrees and warmer. Maybe the fact that Pittsburgh is in their division skews things. But then again, so is Cleveland. And Cincinnati isn't exactly a barn burning defense. Maybe there's something to guys who cover every square inch of their face in the cold.
This will be interesting. Bills Mafia will be jumping or falling through 16 degrees of cold air on Sunday. The coldest game Lamar has ever played was 27 degrees. Of course, none of this takes into account Jackson's rushing prowess. I expect him to run. But if this game turns into the barn burner we all expect, he's going to need to air it out too. And that might be a problem.
That's enough for this week. Hope you enjoyed this first edition of Sports Staturday. Many more to come.
@Stathole