Pro Football Reference (PFR) is an analytics database maintained by Sports Reference providing a variety of statistics for American football. The site provides biographical information about players and team staff as well as statistics for teams, players, awards, records, and the NFL draft.[2] It also has each team's game-by-game results.[3][4] The company also publishes similar statistics websites for basketball, baseball, and hockey.[5][6]
In December 2019, PFR introduced the Hall of Fame monitor. The purpose of this monitor is to apply a formula to quantify player contributions during their career (including All-Pro selections, Pro Bowl selections, various awards, and career statistics) and to highlight where Pro Football Hall of Fame players rank in comparison, often with the goal of estimating a player's chances of making the Hall of Fame.[7][8][9] PFR's founder, Doug Drinen, is also responsible for the creation of the "approximate value" statistic, a metric used to quantify the value of a player's season.[10][11]
In 2000, John Turney and Nick Webster, members of the Professional Football Researchers Association, conducted extensive research to create a more complete record of sacks in the NFL. After examining the play-by-play records of every NFL team as well as game film at NFL films they compiled a list of players with 100 sacks beginning in 1960.[12][13] These statistics, both the official and unofficial sack counts, are counted and displayed separately on the site from 1960 onwards.[14]