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The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan's Guide to All-time Player Rankings
In The Pro Football Historical Abstract , author and sports statistical genius Sean Lahman presents a revolutionary new approach to football statistics. Using methods he’s developed over years (such as “adjusted yards” and “Q ratings”), he looks at football in an all-encompassing way and rates the best players throughout the history of America’s most popular team sport. Lahman sets forth new all-time rankings of players in each position. He also discusses how the game has changed from decade to decade, and how these changes must be considered when comparing modern players like Tom Brady, Dan Marino, and Emmitt Smith with players of past eras, such as Sammy Baugh, Jim Brown, and Johnny Unitas. Following the success of The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract , Lahman now establishes himself as the Bill James of football. Setting a new gold standard in books on the NFL, The Pro Football Historical Abstract is a must for all those for whom football is a passion and more than just a game.
568 pages, Hardcover
First published August 12, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
April 24, 2020
Anticipating the National Football League's 2020 Draft, I finished reading a book about professional football players that I began reading nearly seven years ago. I came across 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan's Guide to All-Time Player Rankings' by Sean Lahman at a book store in my wife's hometown, and was intrigued by the concept of a Bill James style treatment to the underlying sport of football.
The concept of reading 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' hit me in a way similar to my enjoyment of the table top board games of Bowl Bound, Paydirt, or Data-Driven Football, which I wrote about in December 2016. Given that I was taken by the concept of Bill James and his concept of 'The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract', a project with the same goals and techniques in football held immediate appeal. The notion of looking back at American Football League and All-America Football Conference teams and players also held a particularly high appeal to me as well.
A book reviewer named Tom Gower at 'Reading and Thinking Football' looked at 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' (https://readthinkfootball.wordpress.c...), identifying three particular points that made this first step into ranking by Sean Lahman into the abstract particularly hard to accept.
1. The rankings produce screwy results;
2. The ranking methodology that produces the screwy results is not sufficiently justified;
3. Irrespective of the rankings and the quality of his methodology, Lahman for some to many players fails to properly execute his methodology, invalidating to some extent all of his rankings for those positions.
Gower's critique has merit, along with some pointed questions geared at the statistics and methodologies in use for 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' are not properly justified with explanations of the methodology, or they do not fully take into account how reliable the statistics themselves in fact are. Critiques, for example, that get into understanding how Lahman's rankings of Larry Johnson's performance in 2006 performance (https://www.pro-football-reference.co...) should compare to O..J. Simpson’s 1973 or 1975 campaigns (https://www.pro-football-reference.co...) seems valid.
In Lahman's defense, I view the project that 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' could spur as a first step for projects geared at building databases that look into the past. There is broad information accumulation that helped to contextualize performance much more broadly across eras in baseball, which in large part is a builder of the credibility that lends credit to Bill James. Gower said this in the opinion in his article. Further accumulation of data, including the contextualizing of it that quite possibly exists with professional teams today, largely does not seem to exist on a per play basis or go back into statistics like sacks, plays on third and short that resulted in first downs, and other things that we have in baseball. The calling for this type of work, and a public domain for that, is identified by Lahman and theoretically resides through access points such as this (http://www.seanlahman.com/resources/).
The merit that could exist moving forward with the book 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan's Guide to All-Time Player Rankings' was not exactly the exciting or educational experience that I had hoped for from the beginning. There quite honestly is a reason that it took me almost seven years to finish reading the book. On that point alone, my rating is not that high. However, I would truly like to see something that addresses the critiques of 'Reading and Thinking Football' with the loftier goal that Sean Lahman had with his project. My rating for 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan's Guide to All-Time Player Rankings' by Sean Lahman is 3-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
The concept of reading 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' hit me in a way similar to my enjoyment of the table top board games of Bowl Bound, Paydirt, or Data-Driven Football, which I wrote about in December 2016. Given that I was taken by the concept of Bill James and his concept of 'The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract', a project with the same goals and techniques in football held immediate appeal. The notion of looking back at American Football League and All-America Football Conference teams and players also held a particularly high appeal to me as well.
A book reviewer named Tom Gower at 'Reading and Thinking Football' looked at 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' (https://readthinkfootball.wordpress.c...), identifying three particular points that made this first step into ranking by Sean Lahman into the abstract particularly hard to accept.
1. The rankings produce screwy results;
2. The ranking methodology that produces the screwy results is not sufficiently justified;
3. Irrespective of the rankings and the quality of his methodology, Lahman for some to many players fails to properly execute his methodology, invalidating to some extent all of his rankings for those positions.
Gower's critique has merit, along with some pointed questions geared at the statistics and methodologies in use for 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' are not properly justified with explanations of the methodology, or they do not fully take into account how reliable the statistics themselves in fact are. Critiques, for example, that get into understanding how Lahman's rankings of Larry Johnson's performance in 2006 performance (https://www.pro-football-reference.co...) should compare to O..J. Simpson’s 1973 or 1975 campaigns (https://www.pro-football-reference.co...) seems valid.
In Lahman's defense, I view the project that 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract' could spur as a first step for projects geared at building databases that look into the past. There is broad information accumulation that helped to contextualize performance much more broadly across eras in baseball, which in large part is a builder of the credibility that lends credit to Bill James. Gower said this in the opinion in his article. Further accumulation of data, including the contextualizing of it that quite possibly exists with professional teams today, largely does not seem to exist on a per play basis or go back into statistics like sacks, plays on third and short that resulted in first downs, and other things that we have in baseball. The calling for this type of work, and a public domain for that, is identified by Lahman and theoretically resides through access points such as this (http://www.seanlahman.com/resources/).
The merit that could exist moving forward with the book 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan's Guide to All-Time Player Rankings' was not exactly the exciting or educational experience that I had hoped for from the beginning. There quite honestly is a reason that it took me almost seven years to finish reading the book. On that point alone, my rating is not that high. However, I would truly like to see something that addresses the critiques of 'Reading and Thinking Football' with the loftier goal that Sean Lahman had with his project. My rating for 'The Pro Football Historical Abstract: A Hardcore Fan's Guide to All-Time Player Rankings' by Sean Lahman is 3-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
March 29, 2014
An extremely detailed work in the style of Bill James' earlier abstracts (particularly his last Historical Abstract), and one that--judging from these reviews, anyway--suffers in comparison with it. While it's true that Lahman isn't quite as good a writer as James (nor has he written as much, and in some cases he even gets basic facts wrong (Lombardi's coaching capsule states that he was head coach at Army, which of course he wasn't)), his methods are more statistically rigorous and his insights are more satisfying, quantitatively speaking. Basketball is proving to be the sport most amenable to data-driven analysis, and I await Kevin Pelton or Kirk Goldsberry's own Abstract variation (though dear god, please no more Bill Simmons offerings!), but Lahman does a fine job here. Highly recommended.
October 20, 2009
Bill James casts a huge shadow over this book, and really, any type of objective analysis of sports. Well, what separates James from the rest isn't that he's the smartest or his stats are better, it's that he is a brilliant writer. Lahman, and everyone else for that matter, simply pales in comparison.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews