Excel Sample Data for Football Season

The NFL preseason games for 2022 started last week. That reminded me of football-related questions that I had, way back in January 2010. Do the biggest players have the highest jersey numbers? Does the heaviest team win? As usual, I turned to Excel for the answers!

Get the Answers

In my January 2010 blog post, you’ll find my answers to those “heavy” questions, and see the fancy pivot tables I built from the data.

Or, if you’d prefer traditional (boring) game statistics and analysis, you can get those on the 2010 playoff game summary on the ESPN website.

More Player Data for 2022

That player data is 12 years old, and I wondered if today’s players have similar statistics. To find out, I added 2022 player data, for the same two teams – the Saints and the Cardinals.

The rosters will change, as the season progresses, so you can get the latest info from the team sites:

— New Orleans team roster

— Arizona team roster

P.S. I checked, using a COUNTIF formula, and none of the 2010 players are still in the 2022 roster.

Football Player Data

If you’re interested, I’ve put the updated football player file on my Excel Sample Data page, so you can download it, and come up with answers to your own burning questions!

In my sample file, the data is stored in a named Excel table, which has:

16 columns of data, including 6 columns with a calculation.
306 rows of player data, for two NFL teams, in two different years – 2010 and 2022

Player Data from Rosters

Each row shows these 10 fields, taken from the player rosters:

Year: Roster Year
Team: Team city name
Name: Player’s full name
No.: Player number, worn on jersey
Pos: Player’s position code , e.g. QB (Quarterback)
Ht: Player’s height in text, feet-inches, e.g. 5-10
Wt: Player’s weight in pounds
Age: Player’s age in years
Exp: Player’s years of experience (or R for rookie)
College: Name of college that player attended

Player Data Formulas

In the Excel table, I’ve added 6 more columns, with formulas to calculate the following:

FirstName: Player’s first (given) name
LastName: Player’s last (family) name
Ft: Number of feet in player’s text height
In: Number of inches in player’s text height
Inches: Player’s total height in inches
NumGrp: Number group for player’s jersey number (groups of 10)

Training Tip

For an Excel training class, you could delete the formulas in those calculated columns.
Then, help your students figure out their own formulas.

Get the Football Player Sample Data

You can get the file on my Excel Sample Data page, along with several other sample data files.

The sample file is in xlsx format, and there are no macros in the workbook.

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