Wikipedia talk:WikiProject National Football League/Archive 14

CBS Profile
In Template:Infobox NFL biography, would it be possible to also add a link to the person's CBSSports profile? Such as in Template:Infobox gridiron football person. Dat GuyTalkContribs 09:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Doesn't really seem necessary though. You can just put it in the external links section. And it should probably be removed from the gridiron football infoxbox too but no one has done it yet. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 15:59, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Template:Footballstats? Are we generally using this? UW Dawgs (talk) 16:21, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's in some articles. I'm not sure we need all of those sites though. Database football was already removed from the NFL infobox. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:25, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Apparently it has 1,054 transfusions. Also, Look at Peyton Manning's article. Are all of those links really necessary. Not like his stats change from site to site. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:29, 3 September 2016 (UTC)
 * PFR and NFL.com have everything that anyone would need, really. Lizard  (talk) 18:46, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

middle names from rostermon.com
Special:Contributions/50.29.199.144 is on a tear adding middle names to the first sentence of player articles (John Smith -> John Michael Smith) with a comment of "Full name revealed from rostermon.com."

Do we care? Not sure that "rostermon.com" is a RS, but also note that the IP an editing history before this and isn't being done in a way to backdoor "rostermon.com" per WP:PROMO. In the handful of cases I looked at, the full name wasn't available on the official college or pro site player page, but was indeed correc per google searches. UW Dawgs (talk) 23:05, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Someone just reverted all of them anyway. They were probably true but a more reliable source would be preferred. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 23:39, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The source I usually use for middle names is Pro-Football-Reference. If it's available anywhere on the internet they usually have it. Lizard  (talk) 18:39, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I like Lizard tend to use Pro-Football-Reference, unless it's available in their college bio, then I tend to prefer that one. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:16, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment
I've started this RfC because while looking at the article for Josh Johnson (quarterback) I realized how many sub-sections are in his Professional Career section. Fourteen (14), not including his Career Statistics sub-section. I propose that for articles for players that have been "journeymen" that we work on a way to reduce the number of sub-sections. They are mostly only two sentences "On Blah blah, he was signed by Blah Blah." followed by "Blah blah was released by Blah blah on blah blah." That's all most of them are. Any ideas on how we could do it? I've seen a few articles that have a TOC longer than there article (exaggeration for effect). (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  15:26, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, I brought this up recently on Lizard's talk page. I'm not sure that all of these two sentence section headings on articles are needed. Look at Robb Butler for example. I just have the different teams/leagues condensed into separate paragraphs. You don't necessarily need section headings for all of them. That's what paragraphs are for. The Johnson article is confusing though because the Bucs section seems big enough to warrant its own section, so now what do you do with the other sections. If none of the teams were big enough to warrant their own sections like at Jeff Driskel, it would be easier to condense. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:33, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * For this re-worked Johnson page, all I did was remove the section headings. For this one, I combined some of the one-and-two line paragraphs into one paragraph. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:47, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I like them, thus far. Let's see if we can get something worked out. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  17:52, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I like the combining season sections, but it might be a little awkward in the middle of the player's career. Like having sections for 2007, 2008, 2009–2012, 2013, 2014. I think this works best at the beginning of their career, like on Johnson's, when most players don't see much playing time. Even better if we can group years into sort of "eras" for players, but that could be difficult to do without arbitrary grouping or original research. Lizard  (talk) 18:44, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm sure we can figure something out, we're pretty smart people here...okay, so let's huddle up. lol. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:17, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

New season
May we all have a stress-free season with no dumb vandalism from IPs, no edit wars over whether this week's hottest meme is appropriate for inclusion into a player's article, no additions of unsourced content, and no week-by-week drive-by editors turning articles into mush. Lizard (talk) 01:16, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Seconded lol. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:23, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * And more long touchdown runs by fullbacks. Did you see that Cake? What year is it? Good to see Nagurski can still rumble. Lizard  (talk) 01:32, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * "with no dumb vandalism from IPs" So much for that. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:41, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Newton's page should be indef semi-protected. There's no good reason for it not to be. If there's the odd, miraculous chance that an IP wants to add something useful they can suggest it on the talk page. Lizard  (talk) 02:30, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Lol, but IP editors don't even read what's in the actual article (Like updating the infobox with current stats when it still says "Career NFL statistics as of 2015"), they stand no chance of discovering the talk page. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:35, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I listed Newton at WP:RFPP in the second quarter. The game is almost over, still not protected. A lot of good that did. Lizard  (talk) 03:25, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Nobody wants to tackle a Nebraska fullback.  If there were a FB slot on the 90s all decades team, I'd campaign for Cory Schlesinger. Cake (talk) 14:54, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Actually, they may be able to find the talk page because there were a bunch of edit requests when the Sam Bradford page was protected. I think if you're an IP or un-autoconfirmed on a semi-protected page, a message pops up saying something about the talk page. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:02, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Panthers-Seahawks rivalry article
Please see the new Panthers-Seahawks rivalry article. I'm too close to one side to list AfD. Note the creator has ~100 edits and the layout is impressive (re WP:DONTBITE!). The five current citations support some key facts, but not rivalry. My quick search shows newer Cam vs Russell coverage, but feels WP:TOOSOON. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:42, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Who knows anymore. I sure don't. Lizard  (talk) 03:14, 10 September 2016 (UTC)


 * To give an actual answer, I'd say trash it. A few tight games over the past few years does not a rivalry make. But if that's what the media considers a rivalry now then there's really nothing we can do about it. And our inclusion criteria is pretty low. Hell, 49ers–Giants rivalry is in even worse shape in terms of establishing notability, and no one bats an eye at it. Lizard  (talk) 05:14, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, how do we differentiate between sources saying it's a rivalry just for fun or in a way to promote the games and sources talking about an actual rivalry. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:02, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

The sources need to reference the rivalry as an actual entity, not just the games played. This seems like more of a case of WP:RECENT and WP:TOOSOON than an established rivalry. Perhaps if the Seahawks and Panthers play several times this decade and we start seeing third-party references to a rivalry, but for now, this is just a case of two teams who periodically play each other and recently happened to meet in the playoffs multiple times. --JonRidinger (talk) 03:43, 10 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I would say trash it also. The term "rivalry" gets thrown around too much nowadays. For an example of a true NFL rivalry, look at the history between the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins. It started because George Preston Marshall was being a dick and reneged on a deal to sell the Redskins franchise to Clint Murchison, Jr. (founder of the Cowboys). So Murchison Jr. founded his own team and bought the rights to "Hail to the Redskins" the fight song for the Redskins, and pretty much blackmailed Marshall and said "either we play in Dallas or you never play this song again." Marshall relented and got the song back and Murchison Jr. got the Cowboys in Dallas. That ladies and gentlemen is you start a sports rivalry...in grand fashion not just being in the same division or play each other a lot. There needs to be some animosity between the franchises that transcends generations of players to the point players 20 years after the rivalry started still hate the other team, for the same reason. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  17:09, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Week-by-week synopses on player pages
Can we make an effort to squash the trend of documenting every game that players participate in? It's obviously most common during the season, and by drive-by editors adding in details in real-time. Let's try to put articles in historical perspective; not even a year later will anyone give a damn that Drew Brees had a 92.7 passer rating and completed 18/31 passes for 289 yards in an inconsequential game against the Browns in Week 15. Lizard (talk) 01:22, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, if you see anything that seems unencyclopedic, feel free to remove it. There isn't really much we can do though, IPs will always add stuff. Maybe if they don't see it on other articles, they won't add it though. Or we could go extreme and make a big warning popup when people click edit lol. Also, let's remember not to just remove everything that says in Week 13, or whatever. Some of it might be notable. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:39, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course, use common sense. If the player reached a milestone then it's probably notable. But we don't need what we currently have on Ben Roethlisberger. Lizard  (talk) 01:42, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, I've noticed that too lol. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:43, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Specifically the 2009 season onward. What a mess, how did anyone let it get like that? Lizard  (talk) 01:45, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you mind if I just be bold and delete a lot of the unnotable games.. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:49, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Like what I did with 2014? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:54, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeh how I did with 07 and 08. Trimmed nearly 12k bytes. Lizard  (talk) 01:57, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * For now, I'm just gonna be a little bold and cut out the obviously unnotable games. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:59, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd remove from bios and leave a note on the user's talk page that game-level details are more appropriate for team season articles like 2016 New Orleans Saints season.—Bagumba (talk) 08:40, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think we can use Jimmy Garoppolo as a standard, since his page will undoubtably have many eyes on it over the next month. I think ideally we should wait until he plays all 4 of his starts, and then summarize them as a whole with a few sentences. Lizard  (talk) 15:24, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
 * While I agree that summaries of every game are generally not needed in player bios, I do not think there should be a per se rule against discussion of individual games. In some cases, it is appropriate. It has to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Cbl62 (talk) 21:01, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, let's not get too hardcore with this. I think a sentence about Garoppolo's first career start would be okay. I mean if he only has four career starts altogether, then a sentence about all of them might be okay. But for a player like Brady or Brees, maybe documenting all of their starts isn't appropriate. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:04, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Denard Robinson is an interesting example. It includes substantial game-by-game discussion of his college career, and it is rated as a "Good Article". While I tend to think in retrospect the game-by-game discussion in the Robinson is a bit much and could use some trimming, I think the in depth discussion of the 2010 season (one of the most extraordinary seasons in Michigan football histor) is appropriate.  As  and I both worked extensively on the Robinson article, I'd be interested in his take on the issue. For that reason, I am pinging him to this discussion. Cbl62 (talk) 21:09, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, I noticed the length of that article too but at least it's reliably sourced. The real problem is when this stuff isn't. The Robinson article is comprehensive at least. Some people probably care about that stuff. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:12, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Tom Harmon is another example where I think substantial coverage of key games is warranted. His 1939 and 1940 seasons were among the greatest in football history, and I think the level of detail included in that article is appropriate. Cbl62 (talk) 21:38, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * That looks good. I think the main reason this was brought up is because of drive by IP editors who add unreferenced, poorly formatted game summaries using wording like "had a stellar game". WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:42, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I had actually thought about asking why Harmon's was never put up for GA. It's a fantastic article. But like I said in my second comment, I agree common sense should be used when including and excluding games. To copy-and-paste what told RunnyAmiga: ''I'd say NOTNEWS is exactly why we should be upping our standards for article content. The test I use is that I ask myself, "Is it likely that this bit of information may ever be brought up in the future by a reliable, independent source?" A midseason game by Drew Brees in which he threw for ~260 yards would likely not pass this test, unless he reached some sort of milestone. But that brings up another issue: our obsession with stats. There's more to a player's career than stats. I recently expanded Y.A. Tittle and took care to only include stats where they were significant. And lo, the article is 60,000 bytes strong (totally tooting my own horn). So, it's possible to write extensive articles while avoiding week-by-week synopses. We just have to stop being lazy, and start cracking down.'' Lizard  (talk) 23:54, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank for the compliment on the Harmon article. I've just never gotten into the habit of promoting articles through the GA status. BTW, the Tittle article looks real strong, too.  I didn't know much about him and enjoyed reading the article and learning about him. Cbl62 (talk) 00:41, 15 September 2016 (UTC)


 * I don't think that the average player needs week by week summaries. However, great weeks should be mentioned in an article. An MVP season might warrant a dozen game specifics to fully summarize it. I think most 100-yard games should be mentioned in an article for receivers and even running backs. Other key games (3 TDs, career highs, game-winning scores, etc.)are worth a mention.  Anything that earns a player of the week award should be mentioned. Bad weeks don't need to be mentioned.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:33, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Importance scale
What do people think about this project's importance scale. Do you think seven seasons played is too lenient for mid importance. Do you think the number of seasons needs to be increased to ten or twelve or just removed altogether. Also, should the number of Pro Bowls and first team All-Pros be increased by one for mid and high. Maybe we could just add "Bottom" importance to the scale but that might be overcategorization. I'm just weighing all of the options here. Let me know what you think. Here's the original discussion for this scale. Pinging the creator of this scale,. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 12:11, 24 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I'll be the first to admit that the parameters I set out were not entirely scientific and the dicussion at the time was less vigorous than I would have liked. I tried to document my thought processes as much as possible in the importance scale. My thinking in general is that in terms of players, "Top" should be reserved for Hall of Famers (and likely Hall of Famers who've not yet been inducted), "High" should be those players who are just short of the Hall of Fame but were considered among the top players at their position for a decent portion of their career, "Mid" should be players with a longer than average career or a short stretch when they were considered among the league's best, "Low" should be for all other players.


 * Are there any sort of guidelines or rules of thumb as to what percentage of the articles in a project should be in each category? For example, is there something that says the "Top" should be the most important 5% of articles, "High" the next 10%, etc. If there were that might help us determine where to set the parameters for each designation in a somewhat more scientific way.


 * In terms of what milestones we should be looking at, Pro Bowl designations have been increasing watered down over recent years as more and more player opt out and thus require alternates — it seems that at least half of the leagues QBs in particular "make" the Pro Bowl in a given year. Because of that, I've always given more weight to All-Pro designations (in addition to the fact that All-Pro is at the entire league level versus at the conference level for Pro Bowl). &mdash; DeeJayK (talk) 17:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * There are not any percentage guidelines that I know of. Also, I know what you're saying about the Pro Bowl thing. Maybe we could just increase the threshold for mid importance from two Pro Bowls to three. Teddy Bridgewater made the Pro Bowl last year and he's like the 25th best QB lol. Also, if we added a bottom importance, it wouldn't seem that weird to have players who played seven seasons listed as "Low" and anyone below that as "Bottom" but that might be overcategorization like I said above. 17:56, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Just as an example, some people might think it seems weird to have Luke McCown as "Mid" importance but if he was "Low" importance, and players who played less than sevens seasons were listed as bottom, that might not seem that weird. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:59, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * We're currently including 4 or 5 different All-Pro selectors in the All-Pro pages, and treating each selector as equivalent to each other. Which is probably the best way to do it, since we'd never get enough discussion going here to decide which one(s) to include. So All-Pros aren't much more exclusive. Lizard  (talk) 18:41, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * At least the NBA is simple. They just have an All-NBA team chosen by the NBA and NBA All-Stars. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:51, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm totally fine with bumping up some of the parameters for a given category if we can find some concensus, but I'm not sure I really see any value in adding a "Bottom" category. It seems to me that the existing Low, Medium, High and Top categories should be sufficient. Adding another just gives us one more thing to discuss. Truthfully, I'm not convinced these importance scales have a lot of utility for anyone. How do you guys use them? What purpose do they really serve for you? &mdash; DeeJayK (talk) 14:10, 30 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Honestly, mid and low importance probably don't mean much to anyone. Especially not now, with our very limited amount of editors. The ones that should be well-defined are top and high importance. As far as bios, I agree with Top being reserved for HOFers. I think that should remain no matter what. Not sure about miscellaneous. Lizard  (talk) 21:46, 31 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, not a lot of people look at the importance but we might as well make sure its right if we're gonna do it. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 23:02, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

I'm not arguing that we'd shouldn't make the criteria as complete and logical as we can, but just that perhaps the marginal usage and utility of this attribute argues for minimizing complexity in not adding another category (i.e. "Bottom") to the scale. &mdash; DeeJayK (talk) 03:10, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, we're done with the bottom thing. I never actually said we should do it. Was just listing all the options. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 11:54, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Article Prodded
I prodded Plan B free agency since the article is literally copy and pasted from the Free agent Plan B free agency sub-section. Not enough information warranting full article. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  00:31, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I think making it a redirect would be better than deleting it. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:36, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Redirect to National Football League. Viable search term. UW Dawgs (talk) 00:45, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm fine with either one. I'm rarely comfortable just saying "Hell, it needs to be this. F*%k it, I'll just do it." So, if anyone wants to, go right ahead. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  00:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Feedback: mass AfD re rivalries
We have 48 articles in Category:National Football League rivalries. WP:NRIVALRY says "Sports rivalries are not inherently notable." and reverts to WP:GNG ("If a topic has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject, it is presumed to be suitable for a stand-alone article or list. 'Significant coverage' addresses the topic directly and in detail...")

So each of the 32 NFL teams is included in 3 rivalry articles on average, when "Sports rivalries are not inherently notable." Many of these articles are of WP:SPA origin, with IPs fleshing out game results and standardizing layouts, but also literally or functinally void of "rivalry" citations. A Google search for any two teams and "rivalry" (where there is a meaningful playing history) will return many "matches" from a variety of sources (local newspaper, TV station, blog networks, photo galleries, etc). And some of these articles are a wall of such citations, but narrowly focussed on game results, plays, comments about particular games, and similar rather than (WP:GNG) establishing a rivalry itself. So we have some overdue clean-up in order, in my view. And explicitly, this is about the stand-alone articles, not preventing a well-sourced paragraph on a team article about a rivarly (inclusive of meaningful game results, not heavy on play-by-play which might better belong in the specific season article).

1) So do you support a project-wide process (review, clean-up, and flagging) of these articles in context to an ultimate mass AfD?
 * Support as author. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Support, will look over each of these shortly. By "mass AFD" though, do you mean bundling them all into one AfD? Because I'd be opposed to that. Lizard  (talk) 02:25, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I was originally thinking of one AfD for all the articles the project flagged, (even as an WP:Inclusionist!), because the AfD process is likely to resemble Articles for deletion/Panthers–Seahawks rivalry where some folks are going to oppose with google searches which absolutely can give the appearance of coverage. So I thought along the lines of presenting a single AfD, ala "WP:NFL worked to review and improve 50 current rivalry articles within project scope and reached consensus that the following subset clearly fail WP:GNG and should be deleted, with relevant content migrated to team and season articles." Arguing each article with the associated fanbase felt more involved. Think outcome of 2) will help us decide. UW Dawgs (talk) 03:34, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose a mass bundled AfD. If there is a belief that some of these don't pass WP:GNG, any AFDs should be brought separately to allow the merits of each to be assessed independently. A mass bundled AfD would create confusion and be a procedural mess IMO. Cbl62 (talk) 04:50, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If you're looking for potential "weak" rivalries, teams that have articles on, say, five or more purported rivalries are particularly suspect. E.g, Steelers (six purported "rivalry" articles), Cowboys (six), 49ers (five), Giants (five). Cbl62 (talk) 11:08, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

2) Would you support inclusion of the following articles in a formal mass AfD process? (this might be premature based on response to 1), but some of these are clearly bad)

49ers–Cowboys rivalry
 * Support One citation, creation of SPA. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose This book claims "As much as Cowboys fans like to consider the Washington Redkins their top rival, a strong argument could be made for the San Francisco 49ers." And this book argues that the 49ers are the team the Cowboys take the most satisfaction in beating. Granted, they're by the same author. But there's some convincing points. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sports Illustrated ranks this as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Also, NFL.com ranks this as the #4 rivalry/feud in NFL history. See here. Further, CBS Sports rated it as one of its "14 rivalries that made the NFL better". See here. Jeffri Chadiha of ESPN rated it as the #2 rivalry in the NFL. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Not a divisional matchup, but lots of playoff history between the two teams, especially during the 80s & 90s ("The Catch", etc.) Probably more of a historical rivalry then a current rivalry, but a rivalry, nonetheless. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

49ers–Giants rivalry
 * Oppose Functionally uncited, but lots of coverage re playoffs as we've discussed. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Changing my earlier stance. Lots of playoff history. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sports Illustrated ranks this as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:26, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Bears–Lions rivalry
 * Oppose but currently only one citation (needs improvement). UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose These are two of the oldest teams in the league. Plenty of history, especially in the 40s and 50s. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Again, one of the oldest rivalries in NFL history, dating to 1930 with 172 games played so far. Coverage is extensive. E.g., this,  this, this.

Bears–Vikings rivalry
 * Support zero (of 2) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose 110 meetings between the teams. When in doubt, if both teams are in the NFC North it's more than likely a rivalry. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Bengals–Steelers rivalry
 * Support zero (of 2) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Last year's playoff game between these two is enough proof that this is a very real rivalry. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. ESPN.com rates the Steelers as the #1 rival for the Bengals. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per what Lizard said. Divisional matchup. Definitely a rivalry here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Bengals–Browns rivalry
 * Oppose but zero (of 1) citation re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Paul Brown. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sporting News rates this as one of the NFL's 10 best rivalries. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:18, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose A divisional & in-state matchup. The founding & early history of the Bengals, with Paul Brown going from the Browns to the Bengals, like Lizard said. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Bills–Jets rivalry
 * Pass UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Both Original Eight franchises. A divisional & in-state matchup. As a Bills fan, I can say that this is definitely an active rivalry. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Bills–Patriots rivalry
 * Pass UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. FWIW, ESPN.com rates the Patriots as the #1 rival for the Bills. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Both Original Eight franchises. Divisional matchup. As a Bills fan, I can say that this is definitely an active rivalry. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Broncos–Chargers rivalry
 * Pass seems lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Both Original Eight franchises. Divisional matchup. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Broncos–Chiefs rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Both Original Eight franchises. Divisional matchup. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Broncos–Raiders rivalry
 * Oppose lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sporting News rates this as one of the NFL's 10 best rivalries. See here. Also, Sports Illustrated ranks it as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:26, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Both Original Eight franchises. Divisional matchup. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Browns–Steelers rivalry
 * Oppose lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Lizard  (talk) 03:22, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sporting News rates this as one of the NFL's 10 best rivalries. See here. Also, ESPN.com rates the Steelers as the #1 rival for the Browns. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Divisional matchup. Lots of history here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Buccaneers–Dolphins rivalry
 * Support lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. Only 10 regular season games in 40 years, which hardly seems like much of a rivalry, but there is some coverage of this series as a rivalry. E.g., here, here, here. Cbl62 (talk) 19:47, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Buccaneers–Panthers rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Buccaneers–Saints rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Chargers–Chiefs rivalry
 * Pass one citation UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Both Original Eight franchises. Divisional matchup. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Chargers–Raiders rivalry
 * Oppose one citation UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Both Original Eight franchises. A divisional & in-state matchup. Lots of memorable moments ("Holy Roller, etc.) Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Colts–Patriots rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sports Illustrated ranks this as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Also, ESPN.com rates the Patriots as the #1 rival for the Colts. See here. Further, CBS Sports rated it as one of its "14 rivalries that made the NFL better". See here. Jeffri Chadiha of ESPN rated it as the #4 rivalry in the NFL. See here. Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment FWIW, this used to be a divisional matchup, between 1970–2001, however the article states that the rivalry didn't really begin until after then, making much of this article basically a duplicate copy of Tom Brady–Peyton Manning rivalry. IMHO, this article could be legit, but it needs to focus more on the historical aspects and sources and less on Brady & Manning, which is already covered elsewhere. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Cowboys–Eagles rivalry
 * Pass zero (of 2) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Divisional matchup with lots of history. The "Bounty Bowl" etc. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Cowboys–Giants rivalry
 * Pass zero (of 1) citation re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment. Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Dolphins–Jets rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sports Illustrated ranks this as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:26, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Divisional matchup. I know this is definitely a rivalry in the eyes of Dolphins fans. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Eagles–Redskins rivalry
 * Pass zero (of 1) citation re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Divisional matchup. Lots of history here, dating back to the 1930s. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Falcons–Panthers rivalry
 * Support zero (of 1) citation re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment FWIW, ESPN.com rates the Falcons as the #1 rival for the Panthers. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:53, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Falcons–Saints rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose ESPN.com rates the Saints as the #1 rival for the Falcons and the Falcons as the #1 rival for the Saints. See here. They are two of the oldest franchises in the Deep South, first met in 1967, and have played in the same divisions since 1970. There is also significant coverage of this series as a rivalry. E.g, this and [ this]. Cbl62 (talk) 12:39, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Giants–Redskins rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment Divisional matchup. Lots of history here, dating back to the 1930s. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Governor's Cup (Missouri)
 * Pass zero (of 4) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment FWIW, I could live without all of these articles on "rivalries" that exist mainly in the preseason. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Governor's Cup (Texas)
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Jaguars–Titans rivalry
 * Support zero (of 3) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose The Jaguars have been a crappy team in recent years, but doesn't every team warrant at least one rivalry article? If so, ESPN.com rates the Titans as the #1 rival for the Jaguars. See here. Also, ESPN in 2008 rated the Jaguars-Titans as the best rivalry in the AFC South. See here. Other coverage of the series as a rivalry includes this and this. According to the Jaguars' team history, the franchise's first game was against the Oilers and from that game "a rivalry was born between the Oilers and Jaguars that would continue forward when Oilers became the Titans and moved to Nashville, Tennessee." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 12:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Jets–Patriots rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sporting News rates this as one of the NFL's 10 best rivalries. See here. Also, ESPN.com rates the Patriots as the #1 rival for the Jets. See here. Further, CBS Sports rated it as one of its "14 rivalries that made the NFL better". See here. Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Both Original Eight franchises. Divisional matchup. Bill Belichick's "I resign as HC of the NYJ." etc. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Lions–Packers rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose This is the longest-running continuous rivalry in the NFL. They have been division rivals since 1933, have played twice a year since 1932 with no cancelled meetings and with 173 total games so far. In the 1950s and early 1960s, they played each year on Thanksgiving in televised games.  A quick search confirms the existence of significant coverage of this series as a rivalry. E.g., this and this ("The Lions-Packers rivalry is one of the most storied traditions in all of sports . . ."). Also, ESPN.com rates the Packers as the #1 rival for the Lions. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 11:44, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Long-running rivalry. Lots of history here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Lions–Vikings rivalry
 * Support zero (of 0!) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose See my vote on Bears-Vikings. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose When I grew up in Detroit in the 1970s, this was recognized as a major rivalry. Haven't lived there in 30 years, but a quick search confirms the existence of significant coverage of this series as a rivalry. E.g., E.g., this, this. Cbl62 (talk) 11:48, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Packers–Vikings rivalry
 * Oppose zero (of 0!) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose See my above vote. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Packers-Bears and Redskins-Cowboys are the sports biggest rivalries. Packers-Vikes could well be third place. Notice who we play checkers against, say. If not the Packers, the Vikes have no rival. Cake (talk) 19:29, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. ESPN.com rates the Packers as the #1 rival for the Vikings. See here. Further, CBS Sports rated it as one of its "14 rivalries that made the NFL better". See here. Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose per all above. Definitely a rivalry here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Panthers–Seahawks rivalry
 * AfD in progress and why you're reading this. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Raiders–Steelers rivalry
 * Support lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Not many meetings but this is definitely a rivalry. Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sports Illustrated ranks this as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Also, NFL.com rates this as the #3 rivalry/feud in NFL history. See here. Jeffri Chadiha of ESPN rated it as the #2 rivalry in the NFL. See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose Not a divisional matchup, but lots of playoff meetings and memorable moments between the two teams (Immaculate Reception, etc.) especially during the 70s & 80s. Probably more of a historical rivalry then a current rivalry, but a rivalry, nonetheless. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Ravens–Steelers rivalry
 * Pass lightly sourced re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Sporting News rates this as one of the NFL's 10 best rivalries. See here. In addition, Sports Illustrated ranks it as one of the "NFL's Best Rivalries". See here. Also, ESPN.com rates the Steelers as the #1 rival for the Raven. See here. Further, CBS Sports rated it as one of its "14 rivalries that made the NFL better". See here. Fox Sports rated this in 2009 as one of its "Top 10 hottest current NFL rivalries." See here. Cbl62 (talk) 14:42, 17 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Cbl62. Divisional matchup. Definitely a rivalry here. Ejgreen77 (talk) 13:25, 17 September 2016 (UTC)

Texans–Titans rivalry
 * Support zero (of 3) citations re rivalry. UW Dawgs (talk) 02:01, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Lizard  (talk) 03:17, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

Post season stats
Do we really need players having post season stat tables such as Coby Fleener. Now, I could see Willie McGinest seeing as he's the all-time post season sack leader. But other than those players, I don't think we really need them. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  04:19, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, not sure about this either. The NBA articles have them. I've also seen some NFL articles with the regular and postseason stats in one table, with the posteason under the regular season stats. Also, if we only had the postseason stats on certain articles like McGinest, it might we hard to determine what the appropriate cutoff point is. Hmm... WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:31, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * My thought was record holders only. Not single game, but single post-season and career record holders. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  21:36, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Stat bot
Hey there, I do some programming but have not programmed a bot for Wiki yet. I was planning to program a bot that pulled stats from various websites to populate the articles, so users didnt have to. Wanted to know your thoughts before i started. Let me know, thanks! Kees08 (talk) 16:54, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * This might be a good idea. I was actually kind of thinking about the same thing recently lol. I was adding some stats tables to players' articles and I was wondering if there might be some way for a bot to automatically copy certain values from NFL.com or Pro Football Reference into the tables. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:15, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * you where adding? Don't you just mean editing the tables I added??? lol :D (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:37, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Lol, sometimes I add my own. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:38, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * PFR does have an option to convert stats tables into wiki markup tables. I noticed it after they updated to the new site layout, so I'm not sure if it's a new thing. Lizard  (talk) 20:32, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Are you sure? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 20:49, 14 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I've been wrong before. Lizard  (talk) 00:00, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * All I could find was Excel and stuff. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:02, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Click "share & more", then "Modify & Share Table", then under "Share or get code for table as:" click wiki.

Here's what it generates for Dutch Clark:

Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table Generated 9/14/2016. Lizard (talk) 00:06, 15 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Hmm, interesting. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:09, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * It's obviously rough around the edges, but it does the job. Maybe we can email the guys at PFR and try to work out something better. Lizard  (talk) 00:17, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, with all of the values that are there it's probably faster to just copy paste certain values in yourself as opposed to removing all of the other values. Like at Tom Brady's NFL.com profile, you can just copy "402	624	64.4	4,770	7.6	36	7	38	225	102.2" from the first line then paste it into the table. Maybe a bot could get that Dutch Clark info and post it into the correct Wikipedia table format. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:29, 15 September 2016 (UTC)


 * That is neat they do that, would just need some work. Do one of you guys want to work with them to see if you can get that smoothed out? If you guys are interested I can look into the bot as well. Let me know, thanks! Kees08 (talk) 04:06, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, not sure what we can work out besides having them make a second wiki format option that only has certain values. Also, if you wanna make a bot that can automatically create good looking stats tables, feel free. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 11:56, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

So I think there is a consensus that a correctly designed bot would be useful. Would you guys be willing to come up with a standard table, with certain columns based on position? For example I don't care how many receptions a QB has. Let me know, thanks! Kees08 (talk) 02:33, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, that would probably probably be a good idea. I think I saw Dirtlawyer say something about making standardized stats tables once. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:36, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I've thought about bringing the idea up, but I never have...always figured people would just blow it off. lol. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  03:34, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If you can figure something out, feel free to try. Football is kind of complicated though. Because we have people like Terrell Pryor who go from QB to WR and wide receivers who play special teams and get special teams tackles that way. At least with the NBA stat tables it's easy because everyone has the same stats lol. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:38, 16 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Some kind of "if stat X is greater than Y, include in table" could be easily coded, that way we could just create a baseline for inclusion and only include those columns. Kees08 (talk) 05:04, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, but in Pryor's case both passing and receiving stats are probably warranted as he has been both a QB and a WR. We can still do the standardized stats table thing but having a bot automatically create table might be a little complicated. We can just add them in manually like we've been doing. Doesn't take that long to copy-paste the info. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:38, 18 September 2016 (UTC)
 * For sure. In the programming case I mentioned, if the player has over X catches (we can decide a threshold), than the receiver stats get added in. Since Terrell Pryor has both completions and receptions, both of those stats categories would be pulled. We can also work more on the specifics when I get closer to a working bot, but the more we can figure out now the easier it will be to program. Easiest thing to hammer out right now is the formatting of the table. Sortable is an obvious one, but if you guys could start working something out that would be great. Kees08 (talk) 18:51, 18 September 2016 (UTC)


 * Just for the record, here's a previous discussion on the stats tables. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 22:45, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

Page move
A move discussion has opened at Talk:FirstEnergy Stadium (Cleveland) that may be of interest to editors here. --JonRidinger (talk) 16:29, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Gary Anderson's missed field goal in the 1998 NFC Championship Game article
Gary Anderson (placekicker) missed a FG in the playoffs, after a perfect 35/35 regular season. His team ultimately lost and now we have a Gary Anderson's missed field goal in the 1998 NFC Championship Game article. Broadly these articles appear to be consolidated under Category:American football incidents.

Do you see this particular article more under WP:SPORTSEVENT or WP:EVENT? Thoughts on AfD?

Related, this article is now linked via Template:Fox NFL (Fox tv). To the extent some notable plays have articles, do we agree to migrate them away from the immaterial broadcaster (Template:NFL on NBC, Template:NFL on CBS, Template:NFL on NBC) navboxes and consolidate them onto a NFL template, such as Template:NFL? I will presume a reader is better served in locating all similar articles via a NFL navbox, rather than being limited to the subset which were shown by the same particular tv broadcaster. UW Dawgs (talk) 01:38, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

List of NFL 1000-yard receiving trios
Hi all, I recently made the article Draft:List_of_NFL_1,000-yard_receiving_trios (inspired by List_of_NFL_1,000-yard_rushing_duos). How can I improve it pending review? Jinny Jinster (talk) 02:23, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, I worked on a few small things. For one in tables, please for the love of all that is hole, write it out as 1,### yards. lol. I did that and I corrected one teams name. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  17:59, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Understood, thanks! Jinny Jinster (talk) 14:30, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

Frank Reich, The Comeback

 * My football freak friend had a slight meltdown about Frank Reich's significance in this article. I did some research and he's not just being an overzealous Bills fan, he's actually full-on right. I know nothing about football, though, and don't know where this would be added.  Can anyone help? Thanks. JSFarman (talk) 14:17, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * What are you suggesting be done with the article? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:42, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I keep reading articles about Frank Reich's role in this game. To quote ESPN Classic:


 * "In college, as a quarterback for Maryland in 1984, Frank Reich had come off the bench to rally the Terrapins from a 31-0 halftime deficit to a 42-40 victory over defending national champion Miami. In today's AFC Wild Card Game, Reich goes a point better.


 * Reich is starting for the Buffalo Bills because Jim Kelly is injured.


 * Early in the third quarter, a Reich pass is intercepted and returned for a touchdown, extending the Houston Oilers' lead to 35-3. But showing he has the Reich stuff, he leads an un-Bill-ievable comeback. He throws four touchdown passes, the last three to Andre Reed, and Buffalo takes a 38-35 lead."


 * My football friend insists that Reich's contribution isn't accurately reflected in this article. I'd think it should be added but I don't know enough to either know that it should be added or how to add it in context (appropriately). JSFarman (talk) 18:54, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, Reich's name appears 23 times in the article. There's even a little section called "Reich and the biggest comeback in college football history". WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:01, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Man, apparently I don't know football and I don't know how to read. Apologies.  I can't even explain how I didn't see that.  Overtired?  No, that doesn't come close to a valid excuse...Thanks for indulging me and responding. JSFarman (talk) 20:14, 20 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Lol, anytime. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 15:38, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

two new AfDs
There are two related AfD discussions in which you may be interested: Cheers, UW Dawgs (talk) 01:33, 22 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Articles for deletion/Monday Night Football all-time team standings
 * Articles for deletion/List of Monday Night Football results (1990–2009)

Jerick McKinnon
The sections for the final two years of his college career need to be trimmed. I'd do it, but I'm not feeling well. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  03:10, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

The necessity of season links in player infoboxes
Linking seasons in players' tenures in the infobox is something that's done for the NFL, MLB, and NBA. For example, "Cincinnati Bengals (1972–1977)". But I can't think of a good reason for why, except for "well that's just the way we've always done it." There's nothing about the first or last season in a player's tenure that warrants linkage over the unseen intervening years. To me, this is clearly WP:OVERLINK. So, should we continue to link seasons in player infoboxes? Lizard (talk) 04:08, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 * If we do link, IMO the link would be more useful if it were a link to the specific team season (i.e., 1972) rather than the current more generic NFL season (1972). I just don't think the generic NFL season link is all that useful. Cbl62 (talk) 04:14, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm with Cbl62. I like that they are linked (it looks better in my opinion). However, I've just felt that they should be linked to the team's season, not the league. So, honestly, I know it would be a bit of a big change, but I would wholeheartedly support it. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  04:38, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I support removal of these season links. Lizard, no citation / hat tip for that rational above? :) Jweiss11 (talk) 04:57, 27 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what you're talking about. Any verbatim phrases expressed hitherto are purely coincidental, I assure you. Lizard  (talk) 05:58, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Help Needed for Two Colts Players' Articles
Would anyone be willing to create an article for Colts player Matthias Farley? I have a picture of him, but there's no article. Also, there's an article for Colts player Edwin Jackson, but it lacks an infobox. I realize I could do this myself, but I am focusing on pictures right now. Thank you, Jeffrey Beall (talk) 12:25, 22 September 2016 (UTC).
 * Both of these requests have been fulfilled. Thanks very much, Jeffrey Beall (talk) 10:48, 27 September 2016 (UTC).

Current players needing articles
There are current NFL players without articles at WikiProject National Football League/Articles to create if anyone wants to create them. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:21, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Su'a Cravens
He's officially a safety, but has been lining up at linebacker. Should he be listed as both in the lede and infobox? User:Dissident93 doesn't think so, using this edit summary: "(officially listed at safety, but does not actually play snaps at the position, so I don't think we should call him one (in the first sentence and infobox at least))". I think his point is moot, seeing as he is officially a safety. I think it was correct when I had him listed as a "safety and linebacker" in the lede and "Safety / Linebacker" in the infobox. Thoughts? (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  07:58, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I'd say list him as defensive back, since that's what NFL.com has him as. Lizard  (talk) 14:44, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * I would say I agree, but don't get me wrong, I think it should be mentioned that he also plays linebacker. Be it in the lede, infobox or pro section. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  17:00, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Except he hasn't taken one snap at DB in training camp, preseason, or regular season. Him being listed at S is from when he was drafted and before the team had set plans for him. He is currently a 100% passing down linebacker, and the article should not be primarily calling him a safety. Deone Bucannon (who plays a similar role for the Cardinals) is officially listed as a "moneybacker/$LB", so should we call him one in his infobox too, despite him just being another converted safety playing LB? If the fact he's officially listed at S must be listed, it needs to come after him being a linebacker, where he takes 100% of the snaps. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 18:35, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * The hell is a $LB? I would've thought that was a typo on the Cardinals' site. Anyway, what (and how) to include/not include as positions in the infobox is an issue that's gone unaddressed for way too long. We really aught to have a firm rule in place, but no one on this project ever gives a damn about coming up with guidelines. Lizard  (talk) 20:06, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Maybe we could solve this with an email to NFL.com telling them that Cravens actually plays LB. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 22:19, 28 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Check this for an explanation. Cravens is pretty much this for the Redskins, but it's just a gimmicky term for a new era of passing down linebackers. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 23:39, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

List of most career 300-yard passing games in the NFL AfD nomination
Need discussion of the List of most career 300-yard passing games in the NFL article, which I nominated for AfD. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 21:40, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Requested move of Dick Lane (American football)
RM discussion taking place at Talk:Dick Lane (American football) Lizard  (talk) 22:06, 23 September 2016 (UTC)
 * Based on the way that move request went, I wonder about a possible move for Joe Greene (American football)? Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:45, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I'll be working on expanding Mean Joe's article soon. Indeed, I've heard him referred to as Mean Joe Greene probably more often than just "Joe Greene." Lizard  (talk) 00:53, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Ironically, according to the article, "Joe Greene" apparently wasn't even his actual name. Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:57, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Really it's probably best as it is now. Night Train's was obviously misnamed, since he was rarely, if ever referred to as Dick Lane. That doesn't seem to be the case with Joe Greene. It's probably best to stick to what NFL.com has them listed as and not to go overboard with these moves. Bruiser Kinard was another obvious one, who we had as Frank Kinard until just recently. Lizard  (talk) 23:30, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Help requested
Does anyone have a bot or use WP:AWB? The season articles have the lead sentence linked in the bold, which we should avoid per WP:BOLDAVOID. I'm hoping that none of us have to do this manually, so I'm trying to find a quick solution. Thanks, Corkythe hornetfan  (ping me) 01:58, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Lizard (talk) 02:28, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Example diff and category of articles this affects please. ~ Rob 13 Talk 02:39, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * This is the most common, but "seasons" isn't always linked. Basically nothing in the lead that's bold should be linked. Lizard  (talk) 02:50, 6 October 2016 (UTC)
 * A good chunk also use nfly for the year... see 2015 Washington Redskins season. Corkythe hornetfan  (ping me) 02:57, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Update: Pro Football Hall of Fame article improvement campaign
The WikiProject National Football League/Pro Football Hall of Fame article improvement campaign has been picking up lately, and over the past few months we've brought several top-importance articles up to presentable states. There's still a long way to go though, so please consider helping out. Lizard (talk) 19:28, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Jay Glazer
Can anyone explain the massive vandalism of Jay Glazer's page over the past 12 hours? All the vandalism seems to be centered around jokes about his wife/marriage/being single etc, but I couldn't find anything with a Google search. Lizard (talk) 00:14, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * A quick Twitter search seems to imply it's a joke from the Pardon My Take podcast that he's on, which would at least explain the "Glazer washes his apples" joke.  Zappa  24  Mati   00:45, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * "Joke". And WP:RFPP has been criminally slow lately. 1,280 admins on this site and there's only around 5 of them that regularly deal with protection requests. Lizard  (talk) 00:54, 11 October 2016 (UTC)

2006 Chicago Bears–Arizona Cardinals game up for deletion
As mentioned in the title, 2006 Chicago Bears–Arizona Cardinals game is at AfD right now, and it's somewhat of a mess right now with the only participants being accounts who have not made a single edit until today, particularly to that article (and also the one snarky delete !vote saying it should be deleted since Bears games in recent years are automatically not notable and how Rex Grossman is "a harbinger of worse things to come" – which they eventually reverted). Discussion can be viewed here.  Zappa  24  Mati   23:58, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Darren Sharper serial rapist
Feedback at Talk:Darren Sharper would be appreciated. This is a serious matter involving WP:NPOV and WP:DUE, so we need a stronger consensus. Lizard (talk) 03:00, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Still need more input here please. Lizard  (talk) 23:38, 16 October 2016 (UTC)

Okay you maggots!!!
Here's the deal, I'm one of few semi-active members of the Arena Football League project. Anyone willing to help out and make the AFL players articles better. There are plenty. It's the same format as the NFL/CFL ones. If you have any questions about it you can Ping me or leave a message on my talk page. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  04:04, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Discussion
A discussion at Talk:American football may be of interest to project members. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 02:51, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Merge inactive projects
We currently have the following child projects that have had little recent activity, with most of them never having much activity at all: We should merge all of these into subprojects of the main NFL WikiProject. These standalone projects may have been viable in the past when there were more editors but now we need to downsize. Does anyone know how to do this without breaking anything? Lizard (talk) 02:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * WikiProject American Football League
 * WikiProject Chicago Bears
 * WikiProject Green Bay Packers
 * WikiProject Indianapolis Colts
 * WikiProject Kansas City Chiefs
 * WikiProject Los Angeles Rams
 * WikiProject New England Patriots
 * WikiProject San Francisco 49ers
 * Go for it. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:47, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Lizard, sounds like a good idea. You may want to consult WikiProject Council for guidance. Jweiss11 (talk) 02:49, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * All he really has to do is move the page. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:51, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What about the projects' assessment banners? Will we have to manually remove them from every talkpage? Lizard  (talk) 02:54, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming you're talking about making them subprojects like at WikiProject National Football League/New York Giants subproject. That subproject has banners, see Talk:Eli Manning. Maybe we could make them like the Patriots banner. Also, see this. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:58, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, if not removed outright (my preferred option, since these projects are all but dead so the banners serve no real purpose) they should all be like the Patriots banner. Lizard  (talk) 03:16, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yh, we could also just redirect all of these inactive projects. Also for the banners, if someone's been a on a lot of teams. It could say like / Team 1 / Team 2 / Team 3 / Team 4 / Team 5. Not sure if that's necessary. And we might as well have banners for all the teams if we're gonna do that. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 14:25, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Yep, exactly. It's silly if they're there just because a player was on that team, and not have banners for all teams. Nuke 'em. Lizard (talk) 14:43, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * And no one really uses them anyway. They're kinda just clutter. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 14:46, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The WikiProject National Football League/Pittsburgh Steelers subproject requires manual checks against B-class criteria. See Talk:John Henry Johnson. So unnecessary, I didn't even bother lol. Lizard  (talk) 14:55, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The CFL banner had the manual B-class thing too until I removed it. Not necessary. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 14:57, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


 * What about the Packers project. Looks like Gonzo had a fair number of edits to the banners. Does this mean all of his work was for naught lol. Looks like he got BU RoBOT to tag the pages too. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 14:55, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I thought about that, but decided to include it as "inactive" since Gonzo has been MIA for a month. The project had some activity with me, Gonzo, and User:Church (who's also been missing for a month), but the initial enthusiasm seems to have gone flat. Lizard  (talk) 14:58, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * And those discussions could just be held on this page anyway. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 15:01, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * What if they come back. Are we gonna unredirect everything and then they leave again (making the project inactive) and we redirect everything again. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 15:17, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * We'll get to that bridge once we cross it. Lizard  (talk) 16:12, 20 October 2016 (UTC)


 * What do you suggest we do with the userboxes. If we redirected the projects, that would really be the only thing left to do. Besides removing the banners. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:32, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Pinging BU Rob13, since he might have some useful input and since his bot was discussed here. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I'm against deleting/redirecting the child projects & banners, if only because they really aren't doing any harm where they are right now, they obviously represent a lot of hard work spent by someone in the past, and they could be useful again someday in the future. However, we probably should make them sub-projects of the main NFL project, rather then stand-alones, and collapse the banners into the main NFL one, like what was done with the Patriots project already, and as has already been done for the baseball, basketball, and ice hockey projects. Ejgreen77 (talk) 22:32, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * My bot could almost certainly do most/all of the cleanup if we decide to implement this. Speaking as an editor of templates, I love consolidation when it doesn't take away from the benefit of the templates, so I think these should be merged. Speaking as someone who doesn't want to drive away a long-time editor, it would be a horrible idea to merge the Green Bay Packers WikiProject without Gonzo's affirmative consent. I mean, how would you feel if you worked to get a project running, you got a bit busy, and came back to all your work undone? I asked him about merging before I did the bot tagging run, and he preferred to (for now) keep them separate and build the project in the hopes that editors would appear once the project was more developed. There's no harm in giving him a chance to do that. ~ Rob 13 Talk 05:06, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Good point about Gonzo, he did put a lot of work into getting that project back up. I sometimes forget that when someone hasn't edited in a while it doesn't necessarily mean they've lost interest. Lizard  (talk) 06:30, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I am still alive ;) Just got caught in real life stuff. My main concern has always been organizing and properly assessing articles, and then focusing my energies on articles I am interested in (Go Pack! Go!). So if all of the team projects get merged, I would prefer the Packer's one be retained in a similar way to WikiProject New England Patriots, allowing WikiProject National Football League to include  which would point to WikiProject Green Bay Packers.
 * I would probably prefer for everything to stay as-is for the Packers project for now, as my main concern would be breaking the functionality of certain items and tools. I am a full supporter of merging any of the other sub-projects that have had no activity for some time. If I were doing this, I would:
 * Notify all sub-projects of the impending changes.
 * Mark all of the pages as Historic that do not have any active users who disagree with the proposal.
 * Add the functionality in WikiProject National Football League to be marked as a team sub-project for all inactive sub-projects (to retain categorization and linkages).
 * Have a Bot run that would remove those project's tags and add the team qualifier to WikiProject National Football League (i.e. WikiProject Chicago Bears would be removed and  would be added to WikiProject National Football League.)
 * Again, I would prefer this not to happen to the Packers project right now, unless someone can guarantee all of the tools and categorization would be maintained.
 * Just for all to know, I still consistently check my talk page/watchlist and will respond promptly. Just had some issues come up and haven't had the time to edit lately. Thanks! « Gonzo fan2007   (talk)  @  23:02, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

NFL Century Division = AFC North?
See the comments I made here, please. Would like some input (and actual sources). oknazevad (talk) 04:23, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
 * No one? I seriously think this needs to be addressed. The current claims reeks of WP:SYNTH, OR and just plain unsourced, made up crap. Please comment. oknazevad (talk) 18:31, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

Scope
Are the American Football League and All-America Football Conference included in this project's scope. I was just wondering. I've seen AFL and AAFC articles tagged with the NFL banner. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:44, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
 * The AFL definitely is, since its history, stats, etc were merged with the NFL in 1970. Not sure about the AAFC. Lizard  (talk) 15:41, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Should duplicate team names be linked in infoboxes?
I notice on many infoboxes that users remove the links and then someone else adds it back and then someone else removes it again, etc. Example: WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 14:58, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * I think our preference is to link every instance regardless. Lizard  (talk) 15:42, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * In my opinion,there's no need to link the same thing twice in the infobox. Apart from aesthetics it doesn't add anything beside unneeded link and breaks MOS:OVERLINK policy. – Sabbatino (talk) 16:10, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, in most cases we link every instance regardless. There are arguments such as those mentioned by Sabbatino that they are overlinking, but generally people ignore over linking in a list so the list is uniform. But I don't believe there is anything codified stating so. -DJSasso (talk) 16:45, 31 October 2016 (UTC)

Terrell Owens
We need some more eyes on Terrell Owens. An IP put him on the Eagles and this edit stayed for over 20 minutes. Which normally wouldn't be a big deal, except Owens is the hot topic of the hour right now on social media, so no doubt thousands of people just Googled Terrell Owens, went to his Wikipedia page and saw that he was a member of the Eagles. Lizard (talk) 21:05, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Requested move of "Bobby Harris (gridiron football)"
Greetings! I have recently relisted a requested move discussion at Talk:Bobby Harris (gridiron football), regarding a page relating to this WikiProject. Discussion and opinions are invited. Thanks,   Paine   u/ c  22:29, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Files for discussion/2016 November 7
You are invited to join the discussion at. Marchjuly (talk) 00:49, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Mike Brown (Cincinnati Bengals owner) article name?
Does anyone else think that Mike Brown (Cincinnati Bengals owner) is not a good name for the article? Of course this article needs a lot of work, but I just can't get past this silly name. He could be the owner of some other team and that wouldn't reflect it correctly. In my opinion, the DAB part of article's name should be (owner), (executive) or something like that. Any thoughts? – Sabbatino (talk) 19:10, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I looked in Category:National Football League team presidents and some of the other ones say (sports executive) and (American football executive). WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:14, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I'm partial to Michael Brown (American football executive) Mike Brown (American football executive). Also see the Michael Brown DAB.  Support a BOLD move. UW Dawgs (talk) 19:19, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree with what? I didn't say anything. lol jk :) Also, it should be at Mike Brown (American football executive), since his common name is Mike. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:25, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Yep, strike re copy n paste mistake. UW Dawgs (talk) 19:31, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I partly agree. That's because I think that "(sports executive)" would be the most appropriate DAB for article's name as he could get involved with some other team from some other sport. However, I'm not opposed with the proposition above. – Sabbatino (talk) 13:35, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

FYI - new FAC up
... although pre-NFL. Featured article candidates/Pop Warner/archive1. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 06:00, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Most Watched NFL Games
Why was my table of the top 10 rated NFL games of the 2016 removed? In a year when ratings are all the talk, I think that added value to the page. There's one for the NCAA, why have one for the NFL as well? Ruschear90 (talk) 21:19, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Erik Swoope
While watching the Colts–Jets game last night I heard that Erik Swoope never played football on any level prior to NFL. However, the infobox lists Miami football team as his college. Shouldn't we list the basketball team instead since various sources specifically state that he never been part of their football team? Or we should just list the university instead? – Sabbatino (talk) 15:09, 6 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, it should've and I've done it. Thanks for the heads up. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  15:39, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

2016 Community Wishlist Survey Proposal to Revive Popular Pages
Greetings Members!

This is a one-time-only message to inform you about a technical proposal to revive your Popular Pages list in the 2016 Community Wishlist Survey that I think you may be interested in reviewing and perhaps even voting for:


 * Fix and improve Mr.Z-bot's popular pages report

If the above proposal gets in the Top 10 based on the votes, there is a high likelihood of this bot being restored so your project will again see monthly updates of popular pages.

Further, there are over 260 proposals in all to review and vote for, across many aspects of wikis.

Thank you for your consideration. Please note that voting for proposals continues through December 12, 2016.

Best regards, — Delivered: 18:04, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Watt shall we do
Requested move at Talk:J. J. Watt to determine the ultimate fate of the universe. Lizard (talk) 04:47, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

Recent change to player page
There is a discussion at Template talk:Infobox NFL biography in which you may be interested. UW Dawgs (talk) 13:46, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

List of NFL awards
I've started a draft for a list of NFL awards at User:Lizard the Wizard/NFL awards draft. I'm planning to base it off of List of Major League Baseball awards. If anyone would like to help in any way (especially by providing/suggesting sources), feel free. Lizard (talk) 19:33, 12 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks good. Go for it man. Jdavi333 (talk) 22:31, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

Requested move Infobox gridiron football person → Infobox CFL biography
See discussion at Template talk:Infobox gridiron football person. Lizard (talk) 04:29, 17 December 2016 (UTC)

Ty Montgomery
Need some help here. Some IP has insanely spent the day removing running back from Ty Montgomery's article and intro.--Yankees10 00:32, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Looks like the page could use semi-protection. Lizard  (talk) 00:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * ✅ for one month, which should last until his off-season unless they go deep in the playoffs. -- Tavix ( talk ) 00:49, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Can you do Tom Savage (American football) as well? Needs protection ASAP and RFPP is running slow. Lizard  (talk) 04:18, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * And Ezekiel Elliott as well. Pending changes is clearly insufficient, which shouldn't be a surprise considering the team he plays for. Lizard  (talk) 04:22, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Speaking of Tavix, if you want something to do Lizard or anyone else, you can help with the User:Tavix/List of NFL players. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 04:25, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

Alternates are NOT Pro Bowlers... yet
Probably preaching to the choir here, but Pro Bowl alternates are only considered Pro Bowlers if they actually make it onto the Pro Bowl roster. Conversely, if an alternate declines his invitation, he is NOT considered a Pro Bowler. Lizard (talk) 16:24, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I agree with you on this.Some sources will blur these designations. For example, Brian Urlacher was a Pro Bowl Alternate during his rookie year. Both Pro-Football Reference and ChicagoBears.com will state this was one of his 'eight' Pro Bowl selections. --  StarScream1007  ►Talk  17:07, 21 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It was one of his eight Pro Bowls. He was an alternate who ended up being selected to the game. I think Lizard is talking about alternates who aren't actually named to the game. They're alternates but they only make the roster if someone else drops out or doesn't play due to injury. In Urlacher's case, he is listed as making the team because someone who was a starter or reserve didn't end up playing. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 01:44, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, I should have specified I meant this year's Pro Bowl. The players who are currently listed as alternates for this upcoming Pro Bowl are not yet Pro Bowlers, and thus they shouldn't have it added to their infobox. Lizard  (talk) 02:09, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Season article consistency
I've started trying to instill some consistency in the team season articles, mostly in the game summary templates. I've seen about 10 different styles of recording scores/stats, and that's only counting the teams that actually have people who are willing to bother updating the articles properly. Check out the AFC East teams' articles to see what I've done (2016 New England Patriots season, 2016 Miami Dolphins season, 2016 Buffalo Bills season and 2016 New York Jets season). Ideally, these should all match with the overall league season articles (see 2015–16 NFL playoffs). I've also made a start on the 2016 Baltimore Ravens season article, but this is a pretty tough job and I could use some help with changing all the teams, so volunteers would be welcomed. Also, if anyone thinks the way I've done it isn't the best way to present the info, please comment here and we can see about implementing further changes across the board. – PeeJay 15:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I have been editing and adding information to the Ravens' article. I was not the one who created the article, which included "Top tacklers" in the game summary section which the previous editor has felt the compelling need to delete. Additionally, I have simply been copying the scoring summaries from the official NFL.com gamebook. If that is not a valid authority on the correct format, I don't know what could possibly be. Such enormous changes to any Wikipedia article should not be made before a consensus has been reached. You can't simply change 3 or 4 other articles and make this into the standard. Jdavi333 (talk) 17:48, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * As I have pointed out, this has always been the standard, you've just chosen not to follow it (and by "you", I mean anyone who has ever edited the Ravens season articles, not just you specifically). I've not run into any opposition over this from editors of any other team article, so I don't know why you're trying to stand in the way of standardisation. If your only issue with this is that this season would be different from all the old Ravens season articles, I would point out that you can easily change that yourself. Standardisation across the entire league is more important than your one team. – PeeJay 22:45, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Furthermore, you ask why I deleted tacklers from the stats section? The reason is that tackles are not recorded on the "Quick takes" section of NFL.com game recaps (see here), only passing, rushing and receiving are. I would agree that defense is important, but defense is about far more than just tackles. Why not record INTs? Or sacks? Or forced fumbles? But of course, if you can provide a good reason for including tackles (i.e. one that we can all reach a consensus over), then I guess we should include them. I just don't see any reliable sources that include tackles as part of the at-a-glance statistics for an NFL game. – PeeJay 22:50, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Whether you are right or wrong will have to be decided. I'm just not comfortable with such vast changes being made "off the cuff" without having a discussion about it first. I have found articles other that the Ravens' that have used a variety of formats, including this one. Jdavi333 (talk) 23:00, 28 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I disagree. We obviously have a standard to be followed, i.e. that of the central NFL playoffs articles. Regardless, I intend to continue to implement the standard format across the entire league. If you insist on resisting that for the Ravens, that's up to you, but it'll look pretty silly having the Ravens as the sole holdout among the 32 teams. – PeeJay 01:32, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The person/persons who originally edited the playoff articles are not the arbitrators of Wikipedia. a format consensus has to be reached among all users. Also, a look at the MLB team season articles shows different formats for different teams, and nobody has seemed to mind until you came along. Cheerio. Jdavi333 (talk) 14:23, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
 * The state of MLB season articles is of no concern to me. I simply don't care about baseball. You are right that those people are not the sole arbiters of Wikipedia formatting, but I'm yet to see any explanation from you of what you don't like about that formatting. Is it just because it's different and would mean a lot of work to fix all the other Ravens articles? I'm not denying it would be a lot of work, but one should never let the prospect of effort stand in the way of a better encyclopaedia. – PeeJay 14:28, 29 November 2016 (UTC)


 * How is it possible that no one but a disgruntled, stuck-in-the-mud Ravens fan has anything to say about this issue? Can I assume that everyone else is perfectly happy with my suggestion for standardisation? Is User:Jdavi333 really on his own in opposition to this? I don't want to step on anyone's toes by enforcing something that doesn't meet all the appropriate guidelines, but if no one has any objections, I'm going to go ahead and continue with my changes - including to the Ravens 2016 article. – PeeJay 17:39, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the compliment. Please read WP:Insult. Additionally, this is not the way Wikipedia works. As explained in WP:CON, major format changes and the like must be reached by consensus, not by one editor's whim. I have just been following what was done in several previous articles on the same subject. The fact that no one else has commented just means that they don't care either way. You have your opinion, while mine are based in the fundamental principles of Wikipedia. Jdavi333 (talk) 17:43, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Check out WP:SILENCE. I've implemented these changes on eight articles already (excluding the Vikings, which was already like this), and no one has complained except you. That implies consensus. The Ravens articles are not your sole domain, so if you are the only one complaining across the 32 teams in the league, I'm afraid consensus is already against you. – PeeJay 17:49, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * @PeeJay– From the fact that you had to change all those other articles, obviously the previous editors DID disagree with you. The fact that they havent changed it back might not be considered consensus if they previously disagreed with you.Jdavi333 (talk) 18:04, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Correct. As soon as a single editor voices dissent, WP:SILENCE is no longer applicable. Silence is a very weak form a consensus; if one person disagrees, and another 500 people remain silent, then the vote count is 1 disagree to 1 agree (assuming the one proposing the guideline is the 1 agree). Lizard  (talk) 18:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. But that's why this discussion is here. So far, User:Jdavi333 has not exactly explained his objection to my changes other than to say he simply prefers the original style of the Ravens article. Saying "I like the old ways" is not a valid argument. The only decent argument I've seen from him is, "it matches the official NFL gamebooks", which is fair enough, but we don't have to match the gamebooks verbatim. For example, the gamebooks list drive lengths in the format "8-74, 5:16"; how is a casual reader supposed to know that actually means "8 plays, 74 yards, 5:16"? Same goes for the stats lines in the Ravens article. How is a casual reader supposed to know that "BAL – Joe Flacco – 23–34–258–1–0" means Joe Flacco completed 23 of his 34 attempts for 258 yards and a touchdown? I know because I'm familiar with football and I have a reference to compare against, but we're supposed to be catering for people who don't necessarily have a clue about the sport. Tell me I'm wrong. – PeeJay 23:02, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * What exactly are you changing. They all look the same too me. Only difference I noticed was the top tacklers. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:53, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Positioning of the time when the score was made, wording of the description of each score, the notation for the PAT/2PT conversion, the notation for the scoreline, and the notation for the drive length/duration. See above for arguments. – PeeJay 23:02, 2 December 2016 (UTC)


 * So am I to gather from the silence in this thread that everyone here is happy with the inconsistency between teams? If Jdavi333 is the only one opposing this and I'm the only one in support, what else is there to do? – PeeJay 16:29, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * See Warnock's dilemma. Personally, I would like if we had a standard way of doing it, but it's really not all that critical to me. Lizard  (talk) 17:56, 10 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I wasn't aware until recent edits to the 2016 Jacksonville Jaguars season article. Reviewing the edits made by Jay and the discussion here I agree with him on some points but disagree on most. First of all, I understand the idea of bringing consistency across all NFL articles, however I disagree whether this is necessary, and like Lizard the Wizard it's not that critical to me especially considering a lot of articles don't have people to update the game summaries regularly. Additionally, I don't agree with the removal of the "Top tacklers" stat, PeeJay2K3 argues that this stat isn't included on the NFL quick take recap, but neither is the timestamp for each score, yet that was added in the drive info. On top of that, we don't have to follow NFL.com to the letter, Wikipedia isn't bound by their style guide. DragonFury (talk) 19:41, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * True enough about the tacklers, but if you look at any NFL.com game book, you'll see that the defensive stat that is actually given the most prominence is interceptions. Why not record those in our game boxes instead of tackles? Primarily, we follow the NFL.com game books, which do include the times of each score – after all, if you're going to include drive lengths/durations, why not include the time when the points were scored too? But I'm not here to simply impose my will on you all, I just want to find a common style that we can all agree on. And yes, you're right, we don't have a lot of people here to update game summaries, but if at least some people are going to update them, we should at least be doing it all the same, not just in our own team's house style. Work with me, man. – PeeJay 22:20, 11 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I wonder, would User:DragonFury care to actually engage in a discussion here or does he simply intend to state his case and walk away? It would be nice to believe I'm not the only person trying to build a better encyclopaedia here. – PeeJay 17:09, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I use tackles instead of interceptions because tackles are more evenly distributed and there's more of them as a whole so they make a more accurate representation of the contribution of a defensive player. Defenders rarely get more than 1 or 2 interceptions per game but they frequently hit double digits in tackles. As for the times; I consider the indication of the quarter in which a score was made to be sufficiently accurate for the information we're trying to convey. DragonFury (talk) 16:24, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * So we get to the crux of the issue: it's your personal opinion about what should be included. I was being facetious about the defensive stats anyway. The fact is that defensive stats are almost never given in box scores and so we shouldn't include them here. As for the times, your argument makes no sense, and you're literally the only person arguing against their inclusion; since your reasoning isn't particularly convincing, I see no reason to agree with you on that. – PeeJay 21:11, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Just because you don't agree doesn't mean you get to remove them. The argument is just fine: Defensive stats should be included and tackles are the best way of doing that. So stop removing good content willy-nilly when in fact you have multiple editors disagreeing with you unless you want to pretend Jdavi333's posts didn't happen. DragonFury (talk) 21:28, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay, so defensive stats are apparently fine (unless anyone else would like to comment). But what about score times? – PeeJay 23:25, 18 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Score times and drive times should be included. Not sure about tackles, but why not. Kante4 (talk) 13:16, 22 December 2016 (UTC)


 * The whole league has been standardised now (aside from the holdouts in Baltimore and Jacksonville). Hopefully this minimum standard will be kept to for the remainder of this season and into the future, and if anyone fancies it, they could overhaul previous seasons for each team too. As for tackles, it seems like consensus here is for their inclusion, although I did notice that most teams didn't include them as I made my tour around the league. The question now is, what should we include under tackles? I assume we should only be listing the player who made the most tackles, but does that mean solo or combined? What else should we be listing? Interceptions? Forced fumbles? Sacks? – PeeJay 13:14, 23 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Anyone? Also, can I just point out that tackles were not officially recorded before 2001, and sacks were not officially recorded before 1982. The only defensive statistic that goes all the way back to the inception of the league is interceptions, and even then only the ones that were returned for touchdowns were recorded. – PeeJay 21:10, 30 December 2016 (UTC)

Score format
Can we make it clear to everyone that the proper format for scores, regardless of win or loss is the same? It's winning score-losing score (i.e. 47-22). Lately I've been finding on some player articles that when it mentions a loss it lists it a (for example) 17-27 loss, which isn't the proper format. Not just here, but anywhere. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:17, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support winning score listed first. It's how it usually listed in most sources.—Bagumba (talk) 20:02, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support I'll take your word for it, but I'll be honest, I usually do losing–winning if the subject of the article is on the losing side. Guess I've just been ignorant. Lizard  (talk) 20:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support Winning score is almost always listed first in sources. --  StarScream1007  ►Talk  20:24, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Is there such a thing as Indifferent? Because aside from the the impact on season articles I'm fine with any change/consistency. In season articles I prefer the "relevant team first" format that is used. For example; in the Jaguars 2016 season article the scores of the Jaguars are always listed first, with the opposing score second. So if the Jags lose 20 points to 27 the score is 20-27. If they win 27 to 20 the score is 27-20. DragonFury (talk) 21:09, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * In season articles, I don't think any changes would be made to the schedule tables, but in prose, the winning score should always be written first, no exceptions. – PeeJay 21:12, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm a big stickler for consistency and standardization, but I probably won't go around flipping scores according to the outcome of this discussion. There's bigger dolphins to fry. Lizard  (talk) 21:41, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I am not a big stickler for consistency and standardization, but I absolutely hate the 20-27 format, even in season article charts. If the proposal passes, I will gladly make the change in all Big Ten season article charts. Cbl62 (talk) 22:40, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * "dolphins to fry"? You sick freak! lol. But seriously, I've never seen it written losing team first-winning team, anywhere. I've always seen winning-losing. But I also like how User:PeeJay2K3 said it below. lol. (talk page stalker)  Crash  Under  ride  06:46, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I don't know why I ever did it, but I know I heard it from somewhere, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. I can tell you that there are definitely more than a few people who believe this is the correct way of doing it, so it isn't just a random error. Lizard  (talk) 07:23, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, they're wrong. lol. :D Besides, it doesn't even roll off the tongue well. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  07:32, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I always just assumed it was an American thing, but perhaps it's more from continental Europe. – PeeJay 10:24, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * well if you watch ESPN, TSN, NFL Network, etc. you'll see the scores listed as winning score-losing score. Honestly, I've never seen it listed the opposite, ever in my life. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  10:59, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It's not an European thing. For example, here they list as it is proposed. I assume it's an English-speaking world thing to list "team X lost 10–5 to team Y", because in other cultures it varies on the purpose of article (it can be the opposite that in my example). However, it can also be the way a reporter prefers and both variations are acceptable. – Sabbatino (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I said "continental Europe" for a reason, Sabbatino ;) I'm from the UK, so I'm familiar with Sky Sports, I just wondered if it was a thing that was more common in Germany or Italy. – PeeJay 13:49, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Oops. I somehow missed that part. Looked at German sources and looks like it's varying by the reporter's style. – Sabbatino (talk) 14:03, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, being here in the States, I've never seen it change. I figured since it's an American league, it would be common sense to list them the American way. lol. I mean, I know common sense is hard to come by in the world today, well that and the fact people so many times just assume and put them British, etc. date format for so many American articles. lol. :D (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  17:31, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Since I'm actually European I'd add some first hand experience: In soccer the standard is usually to list the home team first if there is no direct reference to who won the game. So if you see the sentence "Arsenal hosted Manchester United today. The score was 0-2." It's understood that Man U won by 2 goals to 0. Outside of that there is no real standard or agreement as long as is clear which score belonged to which team. So you could easily see the phrase "Manchester United went on the road, beating Arsenal 2-0" or "Arsenal lost their home game Manchester United, 2-0." The latter is somewhat rarer but still acceptable. DragonFury (talk) 21:28, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * That's what I expected. However, in the English-speaking world, we don't give scores in this way. We would always say, "Team X were away to Team Y today; the score was 2-0 to Team X" (emphasis added for clarity). Alternatively, we would construct the sentence some other way to avoid such ambiguity, but regardless of how the sentence is constructed, we always put the winning team's score first. – PeeJay 22:27, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I'm also European and in my country results are written in any way. It is related to the reporter and his POV. If his team lost then he'll write "Team X lost 10–15 to Team Y". If it's the other way around then it would be the opposite. Neutral person can write either way. – Sabbatino (talk) 12:53, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * 1,000% support. I thought I was in the minority and have recently given in to what I consider heresy.  I am pleased to support Underride's proposal. Cbl62 (talk) 22:37, 29 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Support - It's simply not possible to win 20–27, or to lose 16–23. – PeeJay 23:00, 29 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support per nomination. – Sabbatino (talk) 13:20, 30 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Comment How would this format handle articles like 1993 Alabama Crimson Tide football team, where (due to forfeit rules in place at the time) Alabama actually is considered to have lost several games despite scoring more points? Even with the (forfeit) note I can see that getting confusing. TheCatalyst31 Reaction•Creation 00:16, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Why would it be any different? The higher score would still be first. Lizard  (talk) 00:36, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * It wouldn't be any different, but not for the reason Lizard mentioned. In results tables on team season articles, we always put that team's score first. The change proposed by this thread should only affect scorelines mentioned in prose, not tables. – PeeJay 09:59, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Exactly. The tables would remain the same, visiting team on top, home team on bottom (for horizontal ones that is). In prose it would be winning score-losing score. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  10:35, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * When I say tables, I'm talking about the schedule tables that list all 17 games, not the box scores, but you're right, those wouldn't change either. – PeeJay 12:57, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Of course I'm right, I'm always right. :D lmfao (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  13:05, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support I'm pretty sure this is standard MOS for most (American) sports articles and websites, and it should also be enforced on Wikipedia. The only problem I have is that this will have to be manually maintained and fixed for all the incorrect uses, unless a bot is created (or exists already) that can assist with it. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 10:50, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I have been correcting it where I can. I think I've identified the user that's been adding the incorrect format. I posted on their talk page about it and they ignored and removed my post, simply because of a disagreement we had previously. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  11:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Comment Which is preferred, an endash, a hyphen, or "to", such as "a 17–14 score"; "a 17-14 score"; or "a 17 to 14 score"? Cake (talk) 18:02, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * An endash, per our (and any other) MOS. Lizard  (talk) 18:07, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Personally, I wouldn't say "an X–Y score"; I would prefer the construction "a score of X–Y". But either way, an endash is preferred. – PeeJay 19:37, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Specific MOS: MOS:ENDASH—Bagumba (talk) 19:47, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Support In any US newspaper, it will be listed as higher score first. Therefore, I think it should be higher score first in prose as well as tables. I can't believe there are so many NCAA football and basketball individual season articles that put lower score first in the schedule tables. — X96lee15 (talk) 13:42, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * well, in tables, (horizontal ones at least) the home team is on the bottom and visitors on top. I think in vertical ones it's guest on the left and home on the right. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  14:32, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I guess these are the tables I'm referencing: 2015 UCF Knights football team. These hurt me to look at. — X96lee15 (talk) 14:36, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah, those are in the improper format. The ones I was referring too are below that one, for individual games, and the info box ones for single game articles. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  15:34, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Support I, too, have never seen losing score first but on wikipedia. I admit I do it that way because I have had original changes corrected to that way, but I would happily reverse it. Lincolning (talk) 19:03, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Kickers
I'm an ignorant Limey with a taste for US Football. I know there's a great tradition for fake plays (that might be the wrong term) some of which go spectacularly wrong. I wondered if (m)any kickers had scored touchdowns or passed for touchdowns (I don't even know if either of these are/were once permitted under the rules). And if so, do we have an article on the subject? --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:53, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Occasionally it happens, but not often. Also, no, I don't think there's an article for it. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  12:21, 10 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Trick play is what you're looking for. See the fake punt and fake field goal sections. Not sure trick plays by kickers warrants its own article though. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:52, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeh I don't think a list of touchdowns scored by kickers would be appropriate. Here is a specific one that occurred in a college game last year. As you can see, the holder passed the ball to the kicker who ran it in for a touchdown. Note how many times he bobbled it before he finally caught it; that's why plays like these are relatively rare. They come with a high risk since the players are asked to do things they normally don't do. Lizard  (talk) 18:51, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * And what would the criteria for that list be? Would it have to come from a kicking formation or only list people who were primarily kickers. Because George Blanda was a kicker too. But yh, that list would have no chance of surviving, I'm just humoring myself. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:55, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think it would have to be plays from a kicking formation where the kicker either passes or runs for the TD (or makes the reception in the exceedingly rare case where he catches a pass from the holder!). Also, I don't think it would include botched kicking plays, e.g. if Tony Romo had made it into the end zone on the play where he fumbled the hold against the Seahawks (although that was a PAT). – PeeJay 19:07, 10 January 2017 (UTC)
 * or Garo Yepremian. lol (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:44, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

Los Angeles Chargers
So now that it's been made official, when do we start making changes here? I've already seen editors doing things like this. Isn't it a little too early? Lizard (talk) 16:31, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * The article is now at Los Angeles Chargers. If the move isn't approved by the NFL, it can always be moved back. - BilCat (talk) 16:36, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * That's not how Wikipedia works. Has the move actually happened? All I see is that it was announced. Lizard  (talk) 16:38, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * At what point do you consider them "moved"? - BilCat (talk) 16:43, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Lizard  (talk) 16:47, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * What are we gonna do with the player categories now. Is it gonna be called Category:Los Angeles Chargers (NFL) players. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Yh, and the colors are wrong right now. On Rivers page, that is not the current team's colors, that's 1960. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:04, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Don't categories go by primary topic as well? If someone types in "Category:Los Angeles Chargers players" from now on they'll most likely be looking for the NFL Chargers, not the Chargers from back when they were in LA in the AFL for a year. Lizard  (talk) 17:06, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yh, you're right. The current LA Chargers cat used to be at Los Angeles Chargers (AFL), so we could just move it back. Also, the current San Diego Chargers one doesn't say (NFL) and they played in the AFL too. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:09, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm trying to add the San Diego Chargers' infobox to History of the San Diego Chargers (same thing as the Rams'), but someone removed the colors. Any idea where they can be re-added? – Sabbatino (talk) 17:42, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No, but that article is atrocious (as are most team history articles). Lizard  (talk) 17:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Yh, the colors for these articles are messed up now, with the 1960 Los Angeles Chargers colors all over the place in inappropriate places. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:47, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Someone just moved Category:San Diego Chargers to Category:Los Angeles Chargers and created a mess. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:39, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

50th anniversary of Super Bowl I
It's probably obvious and I'm just dumb, but how can this year be the 50th anniversary of the first Super Bowl when the upcoming Super Bowl is SB 51? I'm almost positive there wasn't a year that had 2 Super Bowls, so how are we a number ahead? Lizard (talk) 19:36, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Super Bowl I (1967) to Super Bowl II (1968), that's one year but two games played. People don't count the beginning. Using numbers as an example, Super Bowl I would be like 0 and Super Bowl II would be 1. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:55, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Exactly. This year is Super Bowl 51, so 50 years ago would have been Super Bowl 1. Elementary, dear Lizard. – PeeJay 21:45, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I knew there was a reason, I was just too lazy to figure it out myself. It's Sunday. Lizard  (talk) 21:49, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Category:Lists of National Football League draftees by college football team has been nominated for discussion
Category:Lists of National Football League draftees by college football team, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for renaming. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. –Grondemar 07:22, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

Chargers navbox
How should we handle navboxes of relocated franchises? Template:San Diego Chargers was recreated when Template:Los Angeles Chargers already exists. Presumably this is because things like the song "San Diego Super Chargers" are not considered relevant to the LA team now. There seems to be a lot of duplication. Thoughts on how to handle this?—Bagumba (talk) 18:29, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * There should only be one navbox, that song is still a part of the franchise's history. I'm boldly redirecting the San Diego one for now. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:30, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed, trash the San Diego navbox. Lizard  (talk) 18:33, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Also might I suggest merging History of Los Angeles Chargers head coaches into List of Los Angeles Chargers head coaches. It's a very short article and I don't think we have any like it for other teams (but if we do, I'd suggest merging those as well). Lizard  (talk) 18:37, 16 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. WP:PRESERVE whatever is relevant (if anything) and redirect to the list.—Bagumba (talk) 10:31, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Bennie Fowler
Can we please get a shorter image or can someone re-size it so it's not so tall it goes down half the page? lol (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:21, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Is changing the parameter in the infobox not enough? – Sabbatino (talk) 18:48, 20 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah it is. I just wasn't sure what size to use. I always have trouble with that with images in infoboxes. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:08, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

How do I get involved?
Hello. I am a huge NFL fan. Most of my time editing goes to team and player pages, which add up to about 500 edits (I have made 596 total). I would love to get involved with this project. I am good about getting information and getting references. I hope to help as much as possible.

MON5T3R (talk) 20:48, 24 January 2017 (UTC)User:RoyalsLife
 * You can look at the to-do list at the top of this page. But you don't have to necessarily do any of that stuff. Most people just edit whatever they feel like. So you can just continue what you've been doing. You could also respond to discussions on this page. You can add your name to the participants list too. Thanks WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 22:12, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

Will Shields Picture
I noticed that on the page of Will Shields, the picture is not very good. I am not good at pictures, so is there any way someone could get a new one?

MON5T3R (talk) 17:50, 25 January 2017 (UTC)User:RoyalsLife
 * All images have to comply with Wikipedia's image use policy. Unless you take a picture yourself, it might be hard to find one that is in the public domain. We can't just upload anything off the internet because someone else owns the picture. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:16, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

The two point conversion as a career statistic
This question arises from a discussion that took place following a game on December 4, 2016 involving Eric Berry. Berry scored the first defensive two point conversion in NFL history by way of an interception return. Such plays were not legal before the 2015 season as before then the ball became dead if the defense got possession on the try, and the defense was not allowed to score by any means on the try. It became apparent that even for two point conversions on offense, that statistic is typically not included on players' Wikipedia pages. For example, Matt Forte is one of the all time leaders with 6 two point conversions in his career, but this wasn't shown on his Wikipedia page until I recently added it. This statistic, however, is included on Forte's stats page on ESPN:. I would argue that any scoring statistic should be included in a player's stats. Omitting a scoring statistic simply because it is rare or a freak occurrence seems weird to me. It would be like not crediting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with the 3 points the he scored on the one and only three pointer of his career since it was rare. Or not giving Babe Ruth credit for the home runs he hit in the early part of his career when he was primarily a pitcher because it is rare for pitchers to hit successfully. There seem to be several possible proposals here and I wanted to discuss the possibility of including the 2 point conversion as a career stat on NFL players' Wikipedia pages:


 * Do not include these because they occur so infrequently that to include them would be a waste of space (this seems to be the present practice, but I'd argue that they should be included, at least for some players)
 * Include this statistic only when a player has achieved some threshold number of 2 point conversions (maybe 3 or 4) in his career. This would have the benefit of giving the player credit when they've done this enough for it to be notable while not wasting space for the vast majority of players who haven't done this a significant number of times.  My vote might be to include it with anyone with 3 or more 2 point conversions in their career.  My reason would be that 3 two point conversions add up to 6 points--the equivalent of an additional touchdown--at which point I feels it ceases to be merely an asterisk and becomes a statistic.
 * Include it for all players on offense for whom rushing and receiving statistics are generally recorded (eg wide receivers, running backs, quarterbacks). This would be more complete but could be criticized as wasting space as many such players will only have 2, 1, or even zero such plays in their career.
 * Include it for all players, even on defense like Berry, because unusual plays like Berry's do occasionally happen. This is the most complete but would be even more criticized as wasting space.

Thoughts? My vote after thinking about it is that this statistic should be included for anyone with 3 or more two point conversions in their career on offense or defense (although unlikely anyone will ever do it 3 times on defense).Dash77 (talk) 20:44, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

I agree with your idea. But, Eric Berry was not the first ever. It was the first ever by interception. Just letting you know. MON5T3R (talk) 23:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)RoyalsLife (talk)
 * I would say that after two, then add them to statistics. It is very rare, so I think two is a good number.
 * I think adding them later if they retire and only have one and there is room, to add it. It annoys the heck out of me when the pages are made wider because the statistics box is too big.

Soccer lists
I realize this would be better suited for the Wikiproject on venues, but it doesn't appear to be active. Even so it does involve quite a few NFL venues. The issue is the list of soccer matches that is often found in a lot of stadium articles. A new user has begun creating new stand-alone articles such as Soccer matches at the Rose Bowl and Soccer matches at AT&T Stadium (also see AT&T Stadium). I have edited them slightly since there were some obvious issues with wording and the article titles themselves (originally titled "Soccer Matches at the AT&T Stadium" and "Soccer Matches at the Rose Bowl (stadium)"), but it's definitely an issue that affects almost every NFL venue since most are equipped to host soccer and many do. What are the general thoughts on these lists and tables? They seem superfluous and an example of WP:FANCRUFT, but I'm curious what others think. Sure we need to mention other uses of a given venue, but specific details about soccer games? Seems out of the overall scope of the article. --JonRidinger (talk) 19:39, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * FWIW, I agree with you 100%. Unfortunately, the soccer project literally lives for generating statcruft like this (see this monstrosity if you don't believe me). If you decide to try to take them on, all I can say is good luck, you're definitely going to need it. Ejgreen77 (talk) 01:36, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yikes! I love stats and all, but sheesh. I guess I don't mind stand-alone articles, but more when these tables are included in stadium articles, similar to listing every concert at a facility. --JonRidinger (talk) 14:08, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The fact that the last AfD for that closed as "speedy keep" is alarming. Lizard  (talk) 18:06, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Believe me, that's just the tip of the iceberg. And, don't even get me started on the soccer notability guidelines. Argh! Ejgreen77 (talk) 00:24, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Now that I look at it, it seems it was a procedural close since the editor had nominated dozens of articles like it all in one AfD. Which brings up a bigger issue; that we have dozens of these articles. Lizard  (talk) 01:18, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

AFL?
Is the AFL in-scope of this project? I'd say yes, given how the AFL's tied into the NFL's history, but I'd like to get thoughts from project members before tagging AFL articles with the project banner. ~ Rob 13 Talk 08:07, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Um, well, let me just reference you to WikiProject Arena Football League. Personally, I think, it's not, unless the player also at least spent time in the NFL. Many AFL players never have. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  08:53, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I think Rob is referring to the American Football League. Lepricavark (talk) 17:13, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Indeed, I was referring to the American Football League. ~ Rob 13 Talk 19:10, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If your concern is with tagging American Football League players with the WP:NFL banner, then I'd say yes, it's appropriate. The NFL all but absorbed the AFL, including records and stats. So there's players in the NFL record books who never actually played in the NFL. Lizard  (talk) 17:58, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with Lizard, if that's what Rob was talking about. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:02, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd say it's in the scope. There is WikiProject American Football League too. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:23, 27 January 2017 (UTC)


 * While we're here, we should decide whether the AAFC is within the scope. It looks like they merged with the NFL according to All-America Football Conference. The NFL even briefly changed its name to the National–American Football League but shortly changed it back. AAFC players are also usually included on NFL stat sites. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:50, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * But AAFC stats and records aren't accounted for by the NFL, since the leagues didn't merge. Our article on the AAFC is a mess and I would take what it says with a grain of salt. Lizard  (talk) 18:54, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yh, I was wondering whether it actually merged too. What do we mean by merge anyway. Does it have to be every team to be a merge. Does a partial merge count. Here are some sources . WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:02, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, you tagged the AAFC page with WP:NFL anyway, so... lol. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:03, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The league itself is definitely in the scope of WP:NFL. I'm not sure about individual players. Although we probably only have about 100 or so articles on AAFC-only players so it might not even be worth bothering ourselves with. Bigger fish. Lizard  (talk) 19:06, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, this AAFC only player is tagged with WP:NFL anyway, Spiro Dellerba. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:13, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * He played for teams that merged into the NFL, so I'd say that's fair game. It's part of the history of an NFL team, even if it's not part of the history of the NFL itself, and NFL teams are obviously in-scope. ~ Rob 13 Talk 19:15, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I would say yes due to the fact that there are many guys in the Hall of Fame that played or coached most of their career in the AFL. Weeb Ewbank is good example because his coaching record includes AFL and NFL, but they are considered just "NFL coaching record." MON5T3R (talk) 19:20, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Coaching trees
There's a discussion at Talk:Bill Belichick. I advised to move it here, but so far that request has been ignored by everyone. – Sabbatino (talk) 06:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * If it's your change you want it is up to you to find the appropriate venue for the discussion. 331dot (talk) 11:18, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You're not supposed to follow me around and say what to do. I'm starting to feel harassed by such behavior from certain users so please stop it. – Sabbatino (talk) 11:21, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Um, I'm not harassing anyone; you wanted to discuss it here, I'm here. If you don't want me to participate, I won't- but I'm not harassing you.  I'm here to discuss this. All I said was that the onus is on you if you want a change to start the discussion.  That's all.  331dot (talk) 11:29, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * And I clearly stated that a message was left here about the discussion elsewhere. – Sabbatino (talk) 11:48, 25 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Getting to the matter at hand - the concept of a "work genealogy" is not unique to coaching. It's common in the academic world to assume who someone studied under and worked under is relevant. The assumption is that attitudes and general practices will be acquired when working under someone else. For example, a recent example I ran into is the Mathematics world - see Mathematics Genealogy. In the case of football coaching, the influence of a head coach on his subordinates is frequently remarked on.
 * As for the actual sections, I'm only familiar only with the Bill Belichick article. I agree that section was way overkill, and would strongly support trimming it back. Perhaps to a statement of which head coaches he worked under and a brief list of subordinates of his who have reached head coach status in their own right. The subordinates who reached head coach provides a indication of the influence of the original head coach - either in identifying good candidates to hire in the first place, or perhaps in training them well enough to make it to head coach. The list of assistant coaches strikes me as significant overkill, but that's certainly subject to discussion. Tarl N.  ( discuss ) 12:05, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * In the case of Belichick specifically I would suggest that only NFL personnel who went on to other things be listed(maybe the one CFL head coach), and not people who went on to NCAA jobs- as well as the people Belichick worked under. 331dot (talk) 12:10, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:TOOMUCH, WP:NOTSTATS, WP:TRIVIA and WP:LISTCRUFT apply here. This kind of lists could be found on NHL and NBA articles not long ago, but all of them were removed since they didn't improve the articles in any way. – Sabbatino (talk) 12:30, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I obviously disagree(with the exception of TOOMUCH as I've already indicated NCAA relations could be left out). It's not indiscriminate information, as Tarl N. describes above.  It's not statistics(maybe the section should be more descriptive), it's not trivia/miscellaneous information, but relevant to a coach's career, and it's not 'listcruft'(which is an essay and not a guideline or policy). 331dot (talk) 14:17, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Belichick's coaching tree, like his influence, is so extensive that a spinoff article may well be justified. Most of the existing coaching tree sections are not so long: compare for example Sean Payton, Chip Kelly, or even Bill Parcells. These summaries of coaching influences are widely discussed and are a meaningful aide to understanding. One editor may see "trivia" but others see meaningful information, discussed extensively in reliable sources.  etc. --Arxiloxos (talk) 16:31, 25 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I say keep it, but limit it to head coaches only, and eliminate the general managers and assistant coaches. Ejgreen77 (talk) 01:36, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Keep it. The policies cited for nuking the content are not applicable. I agree that the trees can be pared to remove those who have never been a head coach (but do keep college head coaches such as Charlie Weis), but arbitrarily removing them and then edit-warring when it is clear that many others object is disruptive. Also, taking every disagreement personally and responding in a hostile manner is disruptive as well. Lepricavark (talk) 13:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * From a quick google search, it looks like there are quite a few sources taking about Belichick's coaching tree. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 17:53, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

No to sound desperate, but did this discussion reached dead end? Somehow regulars of this WikiProject are skipping this discussion or they don't see it. What are your opinions, , , , , , , ? – Sabbatino (talk) 20:38, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't like coaching trees. Lizard  (talk) 20:42, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Personally, I'm not a fan of them. Unless the coach has produced a number of highly successful/legendary head coaches. But that's just me, I don't think every single head coach needs one. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  20:57, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think it has crossed the line but this request is borderline canvassing. 331dot (talk) 21:01, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You should stop with accusations, because I'm not trying influence anyone. Regular editors are always notified in other WikiProjects at any point of the discussion so I don't see why the same thing can't be done here. – Sabbatino (talk) 21:19, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I didn't make an accusation- and specifically said this didn't cross the line- but I'm guessing you wouldn't have requested more input if the discussion was more friendly to your position. If that's not the case, then I retract my statement. 331dot (talk) 21:22, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I would request for more input regardless of discussion's "friendliness" as I want to know more people's opinions about this. If more users don't show up then we could go back to the previous discussion and try to work out something there. As I said before – I'm in favor of removing coaching trees. However, if people don't care about it then I'm willing to compromise by leaving NFL head coaches only. – Sabbatino (talk) 21:47, 26 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I wonder if this accusation would have been made had Crash or I said we supported coaching trees. Of course not. Lizard  (talk) 01:13, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That's not the point here(but yes, I would have said it anyway). You have every right to your views and to comment. But when someone says "Not to sound desperate" when soliciting comments I'm not sure what else I'm supposed to think. 331dot (talk) 01:43, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You are not helping here as you are just nitpicking my every word. Even if I did not write "Not to sound desperate", you would think the same as you did. Instead of accusing users of something (or at least trying to do it), stick to the topic. – Sabbatino (talk) 07:17, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You may think what you wish; I know what I would have done. I unconditionally regret giving offense but as all of us do I can only call things as they seem to me. I will not say any more about my earlier comment. 331dot (talk) 11:03, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * To go back on topic, I would prefer limiting the mention of 'coaching trees' on Wikipedia unless a head coach has a notable lineage of successors. I would support it in some cases if there was enough prose or content to explain a coach's impact on football strategy. --   StarScream1007  ►Talk  02:17, 27 January 2017 (UTC)
 * StarScream1007 said it better than I did. But we have essentially the same feelings about the topic. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  06:15, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

The guiding principle should be WP:DUE weight. Coaching trees should not be blindly done for every coach, but for extreme cases like (presumably) Belichick, there is ample coverage to deserve some mention, What his bio doesn't need is a full blown WP:EXAMPLEFARM; if notable, a spin-off standalone list should be created if it meets WP:LISTN.—Bagumba (talk) 01:48, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree with StarScream1007 and Bagumba that coaching trees should be reserved for extraordinary coaches like Belichick, Lombardi, Stagg, Warner, etc. This should not be part of every coaching article. Cbl62 (talk) 02:01, 28 January 2017 (UTC)
 * As a rough rule of thumb, I'd suggest that coaches who have not been inducted into either the College Football Hall of Fame or Pro Football Hall of Fame don't warrant coaching trees. Cbl62 (talk) 02:05, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

It sounds like this discussion has run its course. If no-one objects, I'll edit the Belichick article to trim out the non-head coach successors. Hall of Fame status may not be applicable, because that excludes active coaches (e.g., Belichick is not in the Pro Football Hall, but his influence over the game has been considerable). Tarl N. ( discuss ) 21:35, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Please be more specific. We leave head coaches and remove assistant coaches (or any others)? – Sabbatino (talk) 16:50, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * That was my intent. But it appears the discussion has not yet wound down, so I'll hold off for a while. Tarl N.  ( discuss ) 21:52, 30 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I am late to the party. My thinking is that coaching trees are more of a basketball thing than a football thing in terms of media mentions. However, I consider a coaching tree an encyclopedic topic if it can be sourced. I think I am in the minority on this opinion.--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:07, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Coaching trees have been removed from basketball and ice hockey articles long ago. – Sabbatino (talk) 16:50, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm a huge proponent of standardization, and believe if something is appropriate for one article it should be appropriate for all articles of the same type. Obviously that goes against WP:DUE, but the reason I feel this way is because over time, people will always, without fail, use something in one article as justification to have it in another article. Which means if we allow it for Belichick, they'll eventually creep into articles like Eric Mangini and Jim Haslett. That being said, I'll go along with whatever is decided. Treat my vote as a wild card. Lizard (talk) 17:32, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I have no problem with what Tarl N suggests. I could also understand if not every head coach had one, but some do deserve them due to their influence on the league. 331dot (talk) 16:59, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Restructure coaching position listing in NFL infobox
(pinging people who I know deal a lot with infoboxes/have contributed to past discussions on them) Right now our convention for coaches is to list the team and tenure on one line and the position below it on a different line. It was set up this way by Dirtlawyer (PBUH) about a year ago but this takes up way too much space. See Mike Heimerdinger's infobox. We should find a way to put everything on the same line; I'm thinking. I know the back-to-back parentheses are unsightly but I'm not sure how else to do it. Also we should adopt the convention of the college coach infobox of "head coach unless otherwise noted." See Steve Spurrier. Lizard (talk) 04:58, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Disagree on format. On most browser resolutions, this is likely to cause a second line to appear in a less-than-optimal location, like between "Head" and "coach" instead of before the position entirely. Unfortunately, Dirtlawyer's way of doing this is probably the best. The root problem is unsolvable; we're trying to cram a lot of information into one entry. Agree on "head coach unless specified otherwise" (and happy to run a bot to remove "head coach" entries, if that would help). ~ Rob 13 Talk 05:00, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Forgot to mention that I also think we should use abbreviations like the college coach infobox does. Lizard  (talk) 05:03, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Follow college infobox format of () like in Steve Spurrier.  Avoids double parentheses, shortens verbose non-HC positions.—Bagumba (talk) 18:49, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't reversing all of the years be a big change for this infobox? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:57, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The work would be in encoding the template parameters in the article, which presumably a bot could handle?—Bagumba (talk) 19:11, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Ehh, reversing the years would be pretty dramatic. Would only coaching years be reversed and playing years remain the same? Or would it all flip? Either way would be a striking visual change to something that's stayed the same for a while now. Lizard  (talk) 19:21, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Should be consistent across players and coaches. I don't think it's that dramatic; the average reader would not be scratching their head over it.—Bagumba (talk) 19:44, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, I'd rather we not do it only for the sake of avoiding double parentheses. Lizard  (talk) 19:50, 29 January 2017 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure there's a best way to do this. What about Rice (1989–1993, OC) or Rice (1989–1993, OC). Not saying we should do this, just brainstorming. The NBA infobox just lists everything else but head coach as "assistant". However, there are more prominent assistant positions in football like coordinators. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:06, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * This is a solved problem with (see e.g. Jason Candle). Of course it helps that the text in that box is a little smaller. Mackensen (talk) 19:27, 29 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I will admit that the college format, for coaching, isn't too bad, however I will categorically state this, the college football and CFL inboxes look horrible compared to the NFL ones (no offense intended). I know it may seem a little biased, but I think the NFL infoboxes are just formatted (in general) much better and the addition of team colors is a plus. (Sorry for the rant but that's been building for years). lol (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  20:31, 29 January 2017 (UTC)


 * If there's appetite to change the infobox to make use of numbered teams/years parameters so we can easily make formatting changes in the future without a bot run, I'd be 100% behind that and could handle it with my bot. I've done it for Infobox gridiron football person and currently for Infobox AFL biography. ~ Rob 13 Talk 02:18, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Article rating question
This might be kind of trivial but I've seen some season articles like Talk:1979 Seattle Seahawks season rated as lists. Is this correct or incorrect? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:57, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Looks like it was rated that way by a WikiProject United States member back in 2012, when the article was in this condition. To someone unfamiliar with the NFL this certainly is just an article with a bunch of lists. Lizard  (talk) 03:10, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * It looks like a list but if it was developed, it could have a good amount of prose like 2008 Pittsburgh Steelers season or 2013 Chicago Bears season. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 03:13, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Not sure if relevant, but I'll also point out that user is community banned from Wikipedia. "Given the disruption which has almost always been associated with Reguyla/Kumioko we have taken the unusual step of removing talk page and email access as well as fully protecting Reguyla's userpage and talk page." Sounds like he killed Jimmy Wales' dog. Lizard  (talk) 03:16, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Hmm, anyway. I thought there were more but it looks like there's only 3 season articles rated as lists at Category:List-Class National Football League articles. The one I listed above wasn't even rated by WP:NFL so there could be some others like that. I'm just gonna say any undeveloped season articles are stubs. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 03:22, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Category:Lists of players by National Football League team
Shouldn't theses list all be the same. Some of them different criteria. The most common criteria is at least one game played. Here are some examples of other criteria: the Panthers one says at least 32 games, the Redskins ones says at least five games and the Jets one doesn't include AFL. Also, some of them aren't formatted as an all-time list (Ex: List of Seattle Seahawks players). Thoughts? WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 04:54, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Why not just go by category? Oh yeh that's right, because we put players in team categories as soon as they're drafted, and they may never even play for the team. Oops. Lizard  (talk) 05:24, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Do you think we should change the requirements for the player category. Some people might think its appropriate for football because some people could spent a good number of games on the active roster and never play in a game (53 man roster + practice squad). A backup QB could spend years with one team without playing. This would be pretty much impossible in NBA (13 man roster), MLB (25 man roster) or NHL (23 man roster), where probably every person whose on the roster during the season appears in at least one game. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:22, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * No, it's too late now. It wouldn't be worth the trouble of constantly reverting and explaining to people on draft day. Lizard  (talk) 21:37, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Well, NBA teams have draft pick categories. Category:Atlanta Hawks draft picks. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:39, 20 December 2016 (UTC)


 * Not replying to Lizard here, just showing more of the different criteria. The Bucs one includes active roster players that didn't play in a game. Also this from the Panthers one: "A player is considered to have played a game if they have been part of the team's 53-man active roster for that game". WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 21:09, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * This was a huge problem for me when I created User:Tavix/List of NFL players. I had created the list from those categories, and I had mistakenly assumed those categories only contained those who actually played a game. A solution I wanted to propose when that list is completed is to split those categories in two: one category for those who have played in at least one regular or post-season game and another category for those who have been on a roster but never played a game. A good example is McLeod Bethel-Thompson. He's been on several NFL rosters, but has never played a game. Nevertheless, he's categorized as a "player" for several teams, even though that's technically inaccurate. -- Tavix ( talk ) 21:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes. The only problem is there are players who don't fit in either of those categories. We add players to team categories immediately once they're drafted, before they're even signed by the team. If Wikipedia were around in 1936, Abe Mickal would be in Category:Detroit Lions players. Lizard  (talk) 02:15, 22 December 2016 (UTC)
 * I've always thought it was done by contract, and not by them actually playing for the team. So using this, Elway shouldn't have "Indianapolis Colts players" as a category, but some player who only appeared on their practice squad for two weeks would, because they had to have signed a contract with them in order to be there. I think the other sports (MLB, NBA) require them to actually play in a game, but it's probably too large of a task to change how we do it for NFL players now. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 11:22, 31 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Dissident93 that is the way I have always looked at it.MON5T3R (talk) 20:33, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

NFL Top 100 in prose
There's a consensus to not add this ranking to the infobox. (Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_National_Football_League/Archive_12). However do we want this in prose like here? I'm not sure how much press this gets outside the NFL Network, and whether it is trivial and WP:UNDUE or not?—Bagumba (talk) 02:07, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't aware, but we also have lists for every year like NFL Top 100 Players of 2011. Do they meet WP:LISTN? Is there any copyright concerns with reproducing the whole list?—Bagumba (talk) 02:14, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * As much as I hate to admit, it's a pretty big deal. I don't really see a problem with it in prose. The NFL's YouTube channel posts them every season and they collectively generate tens of millions of views. Picking one at random, No. 83 Telvin Smith has racked up over 170,000 views. That's quite a lot for the 83rd best player in the league, relatively unknown, plays for the Jaguars, and didn't really have a standout college career. Every vid in the top ten has over half a million views. And they do get considerable press. Really the main reason we don't include them in infoboxes is because they're so cluttersome for players who make the list every season. Lizard  (talk) 02:19, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Here's coverage and commentary of this year's top 100 in The Arizona Republic, The Denver Post, NJ.com, USA Today, CBS Sports, Fox Sports, The Seattle Times. As to the copyright status of the list itself, I have no idea. Lizard  (talk) 02:37, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * OK, I'm satisfied it's not entirely trivial for bios. Just like other stats, it'd be monotonous to spew out a players rank year after year in prose, but that's better left for a GA/FA review. LISTN no longer is a concern for me.  Thanks for doing the legwork.—Bagumba (talk) 17:39, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I've personally watched all the videos for this past year and this ranking is voted by the players themselves, and they take being on this list as an honor. I've been writing it in the players' pages at the end of the 2015 season because the players care so much about this ranking. If they didn't really care, then they wouldn't participate and talk about their favorite players and their teammates in the videos. I do agree it could look cluttered in the infoboxes but maybe an alternative way of sharing the info could be considered. It doesn't have to be the way I've been doing it, i could be included in the article under awards and accomplishments for those players that have those sections. But I believe that this ranking should be included somewhere in their pages.Jrooster49 (talk) 13:27, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Post season starting QBs

 * I noticed that there are a few QBs that didn't start in the regular-season, but started in the post-season.

The two I noticed were:
 * Joe Webb (2012) - Vikings
 * Connor Cook (2016) - Raiders
 * Should we make something special in the team's starting quarterback's navboxes??

Thanks, MON5T3R (talk) 18:14, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * No. Just no. The way I see it, post-season stats don't count towards season and career stats, and post-season game starts don't count towards career starts, so no. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:17, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I see your point. The reason why I asked was because it is very rare.
 * MON5T3R (talk) 18:51, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * For the record, I'm also of the feeling post-season stats shouldn't be included (in table format) in articles at all. The only reference that needs to be made in the article is if they're record holders, like Willie McGinest being the post-seasons all-time sack leader. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:54, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I would just leave it tbh. That would be hard to erase. They are nice to check out with legends like Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, etc. It shows the work they got done in very few games. AND I spent a lot of time with post-season stats in articles. They are hard to find if you don't look in the right places.
 * MON5T3R (talk) 19:28, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You mean profootballreference.com? lol (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  21:37, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yes, but I'm talking about other people who don't know where to look. Everyone I know goes to Wikipedia or NFL.com for stats and post-season stats are usually not included. That's why I think we should leave those that are already there on articles.
 * Also - We need to start putting profootballreference.com in player info-boxes as well. Many players don't have it.
 * MON5T3R (talk) 22:24, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know about listing people who started only in the post season as starting QBs, but I want to say that I disagree with Crash Underride about listing post-season stats in articles. While post season stats are usually tracked separately from regular season stats, I don't think they are treated in any way as less important, and in fact are often seen as more important in a player's legacy. A player need not be a record holder for those stats to matter, and I see no reason why they should be left out of articles. Calathan (talk) 18:59, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * I just want to point out, Joe Webb may not have had a regular season start in the year of his only postseason start, but he had started regular season games before that. – PeeJay 19:24, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * MON5T3R I do when I can. When I create an article, it's literally one of the first two sites I search for them on. lol (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:34, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * PeeJay I know, but that was two years before.
 * Crash Underride & Calathan so we should? I say yes if they are good. Those who suck, we shouldn't waste time on. There is no point.
 * MON5T3R (talk) 20:25, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * MON5T3R, I'm sorry? "Those who suck?" (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  20:58, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Crash Underride I mean players. Like guys who play one year on the active roster and play two playoff games. We shouldn't add post-season stats. Maybe not regular season if they are that bad haha. MON5T3R (talk) 23:00, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * The way you said it sounds bad lol. "'Those who suck?'" MON5T3R (talk) 23:03, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * See the last comment I left in the "Coaching trees" section a few sections above this one. That's exactly how I feel about listing post-season stats. Even if we agree here to only include them when they're appropriate, people are gonna go around adding them to every single player's page anyway. 90% of work on stats is done by IPs who have no idea this WikiProject even exists, much less give a damn about our decisions. Lizard  (talk) 23:57, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
 * As much as I hate Lizard the Wizard (which isn't at all) I gotta agree with 'em....unless there was some way would put a banner on the page (when it's being edited), ala the BLP banner. Also, MON5T3R that's what I thought you meant, but I wasn't quiet sure. lol (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  05:35, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I personally would prefer post-season stats be listed for everyone who has regular season stats listed (provided they played any post-season games). I just think that post-season stats are at least equally important as regular-season stats, so if we are going to list regular season stats then we should list post-season stats too.  If someone only played a couple post-season games, then the post season stats would only require a line or two anyway. Calathan (talk) 18:58, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * well I was meaning in table form. If it's well written into prose, I couldn't care less. But I mean stats tables. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:03, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I also meant in table form. If someone only played in a couple playoff games, the table will be short (I guess "a line or two" was an exaggeration, but it still won't take up much space). Calathan (talk) 19:12, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Including jersey numbers in player infobox for off-season teams
User:RoyalsLife and I are at a disagreement over whether off-season jersey numbers should be included in the infobox; specifically, should Terrell Owens' infobox include the number 10 since he wore it in the off-season for the Seahawks? I note that Pro-football-reference doesn't include this number. If we do include it, this may make verification needlessly difficult in some cases, as PFR is one of the few reliable sources of jersey numbers. Lizard (talk) 16:57, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should. In that case when he retires, De'Anthony Thomas would have 1, 13 (so far) listed. I think it's safe to leave them off. What does PFR have for Jerry Rice? He was #19 when he was in Denver for part of an off-season. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  17:23, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Lizard, Crash Underride the same goes for Jerry Rice. He wore 19 with the Broncos 2005 preseason. I have football cards of Jerry playing for the Broncos in the preseason with #19 even though he retired before the start of the season. I have a card with Terrell on the Seahawks with #10. My point is that there are guys who never play or are on the regular season roster who have numbers in their infobox. What should we then do when Terrell Pryor retires? He wore #1 & #3 with the Chiefs and Bengals in the off-season. Should we not count these? Lets say you sign with the Seahawks in the off-season and get cut in preseason. You wore #10. You then signed with the Broncos in the next off-season and wore #19 and was cut before regular season. You then retire. Should you put the numbers in the infobox? Michael Sam doesn't have a number in PFR and we have his numbers as 96, 46, 94. I guess we should take off 96 and 46 because he only played with 94 in the CFL? –RoyalsLife 17:25, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I will say that RoyalsLife does make a compelling argument. But I think De'Anthony Thomas would be an example of someone that wouldn't have the number 1 as a jersey number, now that I think about it. If I'm not mistaken he didn't wear the number in any pre-season games, just training camp. Also, Michael Same was at least on the Dallas Cowboys' practice squad for most of his rookie year. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:05, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure, we include people in the team categories when they were only in the offseason and we list the offseason teams in the infobox. One thing I've wondered is if we should start writing what jersey numbers they wore into the body of the article. The numbers in the infobox by themselves sometimes aren't sourced. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:31, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * usually, I do a Google image search or use PFR. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:19, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yh, I do that too but I was just talking about citing sources for the numbers or writing them in prose. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:21, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

NFL biography

 * I noticed there are many people such as Pat Tillman and Lynn Swann don't have their infoboxes set as an NFL biography. I tried to change it and it screws it up. What should we do?? RoyalsLife 20:19, 2 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The NFL biography infobox is embedded to another infobox on those pages. Lizard  (talk) 22:18, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

HOF links for 2017 inductees
It looks like IPs are just adding in random HOF IDs for this year's class. For example, this ID that was added to Terrell Davis is actually the HOF ID for Shannon Sharpe. Is that what's going on or am I missing something? Lizard (talk) 17:39, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Brett Favre's link is messed up too, hmm... Anyway, I assume that the new inductees don't have pages on the website yet, so people are just using random ones to display the banner. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 18:02, 5 February 2017 (UTC)
 * They're not even officially inducted yet. That happens in August. Lizard  (talk) 18:54, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Positions coach templates
We recently deleted the "Current starting NFL punters" navbox because it was needless. So, what so you about the NFL tight ends coach navbox? (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  07:05, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Template:NFL quarterbacks coach navbox, Template: NFL running backs coach navbox, Template:NFL wide receivers coach navbox, Template:NFL tight ends coach navbox, Template:NFL offensive line coach navbox, Template:NFL defensive line coach navbox, Template:NFL linebackers coach navbox, Template:NFL defensive backs coach navbox, and Template:NFL strength and conditioning coach navbox should all be rounded up and nuked. Lizard  (talk) 07:55, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Better to have categories for these. ~ Rob 13 Talk 08:23, 6 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Also agree, these are not that important. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 08:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Kurt Warner
PFR says Kurt Warner was #10 in his first year with the St. Louis Rams. We have him only listed as #13. He also wore #12 with the Green Bay Packers which was preseason. Should we include these numbers? If so, I will change it. This has to do with the Terrell Owens issue, so what do we do? —RoyalsLife 18:21, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I added #10, that should be included. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 19:01, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * This discussion made me write this one. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  22:07, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Wes Welker/Ray Rice
We have Wes Welker listed only as a wide receiver. PFR lists him as a kicker and a WR. Should we include both or just WR?
 * Ray Rice was on the 2014 opening season roster, but it is not in his infobox. It says (2008-2013) Should I change '13 to '14? Or should I just leave it. — RoyalsLife 22:33, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

P.S. Crash Underride look at this
 * Since he wasn't able to record any stats in 2014 (due to him being released before week 1), 2013 is the final season given by NFL.com, so I say we should follow suit. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 00:57, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Dissident93!! What about my Wes Welker question? —RoyalsLife 02:53, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * PFR only lists him as a WR. However they do have kickings stats for him since he attempted and made one field goal and one extra points as a rookie and an extra point with the Pats. But that would be like listing Mike Bartrum as a tight end / long snapper / kickoff specialist when he was an emergency kickoff guy in Philly. He certainly would never be used full time. So, I think it's a stretch. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  05:59, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * We should only go with the primary position the player was known by, not every single one they ever played. A guy like Lorenzo Alexander would have fullback, defensive tackle, linebacker, offensive lineman, and special teamer listed if we did. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 09:31, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Sweet thanks! Crash Underride, Dissident93 some guy (Ringerfan23) is screwing with Tre Mason's infobox. I keep fixing it and they do it again. —RoyalsLife 18:16, 8 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It's better to tell an admin instead of me. I know some members here have the power to protect pages. ~ Dissident93  ( talk ) 02:19, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

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Garrett Gilbert
Someone may wanna give it a once (or twice) over and see how it is. Maybe re-assess it. I think it's pretty good. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  13:52, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Also, can we please finally agree that since we don't repeatedly link team names in the box that we also don't need to repeatedly link the same season also? Like

but:
 * Detroit Lions (2015)
 * Dallas Cowboys (2015)
 * Detroit Lions (2015)
 * Dallas Cowboys (2015)

It makes more sense this way. It's a clear case of WP:OVERLINK. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  18:08, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Crash Underride It looks funky with them as (2015) and the other (2015). I would just leave it to make it look the same. Many people are now making the teams all links. Check out Christine Michael I have changed the second stint and people changed it back. I think with teams we shouldn't over link it, but with years, I feel different about them.


 * Seattle Seahawks (2013–2014)
 * Dallas Cowboys (2015)
 * Washington Redskins (2015)* → * Washington Redskins (2015)
 * Seattle Seahawks (2015–2016) → * Seattle Seahawks (2015–2016)
 * Green Bay Packers (2016–present) → * Green Bay Packers (2016–present)
 * I just think that the first looks nicer than the second one. —RoyalsLife 19:02, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * It's all the same to me. If we don't repeatedly link team names, we shouldn't repeatedly link seasons as well. The only time I would be okay with linking the same season repeatedly would be if we linked to that season, for that team, like 2013 Seattle Seahawks season and not the league year. But since it's the same article over and over again, it's wildly overlinking. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:10, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Crash Underride Seriously? I was just thinking the same!!!!!! Great minds think alike. lol —RoyalsLife 19:14, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, people have talked about it before. Like, within the last year. I think it's kinda obvious we should be, but oh well. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:20, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * So like this?


 * Seattle Seahawks (2013–2014)
 * Dallas Cowboys (2015)
 * Washington Redskins (2015)*
 * Seattle Seahawks (2015–2016)
 * Green Bay Packers (2016–present)
 * Check out the years (for the Redskins, Seahawks, and Packers). —RoyalsLife 19:24, 10 February 2017 (UTC)
 * No, I mean if none of them went to NFL seasons, but ONLY team seasons. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  03:04, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Numbers are retired by the CURRENT team
I though this was obvious, but in case it isn't: LaDainian Tomlinson's jersey is retired by the Los Angeles Chargers. Johnny Unitas' jersey is retired by the Indianapolis Colts. Earl Campbell's and Warren Moon's jerseys are retired by the Tennessee Titans. Whatever the team was named when they played is irrelevant. Their jerseys are currently retired. The same goes for team halls/walls of fame/honor. Lizard (talk) 19:10, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Stedman Bailey
During the 2016 offseason, Bailey was "waived with a non-football injury distinction" by the Rams after being shot several months earlier. I believe he should have been a free agent after this transaction however his page still says he's a member of the Rams and the Rams' roster templates still had him on the roster. He is also not listed on the Rams roster page. Was there a reasoning for this at the time or was it just something that got overlooked? Thanks. Jrooster49 (talk) 01:30, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Infobox NFL biography
I posted on the talk page sometime last week and no one has responded. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:25, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Staff templates
A question about the staff templates, such as Template:New England Patriots staff. Is there a standard for what level of employee to include? I notice that over the past several weeks there have been additions of a lot of positions which didn't strike me as particularly relevant, or at least hadn't seem to be significant before. Is the template intended to be a complete list of employees, or only particularly visible management? Regards, Tarl N.  ( discuss ) 18:58, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Half expected to find the team electrician listed. I say any employee that can be independently sourced is fair game. Lizard  (talk) 19:11, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * We're not too far from that. I won't be surprised to see John Jastremski and Jim McNally listed as edit-war bait, since they can be reliably sourced. Which will beg the question why we're listing locker room assistants and ball boys. I notice at List of current National Football League staffs all the templates have lots of redlinks, which suggests that perhaps notability is being stretched. Tarl N.  ( discuss ) 23:57, 14 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Nick Caley was just created a few days ago, most likely in response to his name being in that template. Doesn't look like he's ever held any coaching positions of significance. Lizard  (talk) 00:12, 15 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Ditto Jerry Schuplinski. Lizard  (talk) 00:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Requested Moves
Feel free to check out the requested move at Talk:Doug Baldwin (American football). Lepricavark (talk) 19:54, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * There's a similar discussion at Talk:Tony Gonzalez (American football). Lepricavark (talk) 20:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

Super Bowl MVP
Why is it that, in the Super Bowl infoboxes, we list the MVP with his position but not his team? If this is some bizarre convention of American sports reporting, that's fair enough, but surely it would be beneficial to indicate which team the MVP was playing for? I realise that the MVP almost always comes from the winning team, but what about in situations where they don't? – PeeJay 08:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I think that's because all Super Bowl MVPs were on winning teams except for Chuck Howley whose team lost. – Sabbatino (talk) 08:37, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * But is this a format used in other reliable sources, or is it just a Wikipedia custom? If it's the latter, we may need to reconsider how we display Super Bowl MVPs. – PeeJay 19:02, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Pro Football Reference lists just the name; NFL.com lists name, position, and team. That's really all I can find. Lizard  (talk) 19:20, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'll have a check in my NFL stats and records book when I get home from work later. Based on those sites, though, it seems like we're following neither standard. Personally, even though the MVP has come from the losing team only once, I think it would be beneficial to list the team regardless of who wins. – PeeJay 09:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I think I agree. While it's common knowledge to us that the MVP is always from the winning team, it may not be common knowledge to readers. Lizard  (talk) 09:09, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Passer rating and receptions leaders in infobox
I know I've adamantly held onto only listing annual yards and touchdowns leaders in infobox highlights, if only for the sake of conciseness. But I think annual passer rating and receptions leaders are just as significant. Passer rating is apparently used to signify the "passing champion" of each season, although that term isn't really used that often anymore. And receptions leaders get pretty significant coverage. How about it? Lizard (talk) 02:52, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * That sounds reasonable. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 03:16, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

NFL franchise records
Hello gridiron Wikipedians. A few weeks ago, in my blundering about on the wiki, I noticed that which NFL players got credited with franchise records was somewhat inconsistent, and that most teams pages either had no records at all, or an ad hoc list. So I wrote a two little scripts. The first scrapes the info out of pro-football-reference.com and puts it into the wikitable format, so all you need to do is copy-and-paste. For example, Carolina Panthers A second script then scrapes the scrapings to create snippets of wikitext that can be inserted into players biographies letting you know which franchise records that player holds. For example: Steve Smith Sr..

The way I see it, there are a few advantages to this. First, both use the As Of|2017 tag so we know when they were last updated, and automatically trigger a notification when they need to be updated again. Second, updating is easy: the script takes ~5 minutes to run all the queries, send them off, get them back, and process. Third, it creates standards on two levels: (1) what counts as a franchise record. I've noticed that this varies by biography quite a lot. I'm all for acknowledging the career passing yards leader; I'm not sure the most rush attempts in four consecutive losing games really counts as a recognized achievement. (2) It creates a standardized place for anyone who wants to find this information.

What do you guys think? Should I go ahead and put all this information up on the team pages? What about the statistical categories: are there more / fewer things that should be included? Do you like the format?

Assuming people are on board with this as a "generally good idea", there are a few things I could use help with.
 * The links to the record holders don't disambiguate automatically, so if I could get some help making sure all the Mike Anderson s of the world are pointing to the *right* Mike Anderson, that would be amazing.
 * It is a lot of work to go to every single record holder's page and insert the code. Help with that would also be good.
 * The table layout occasionally needs some work. For example, if there has only ever been one kick off return for a touchdown in the franchise's playoff history, someone needs to manually type in a colspan=3 snippet, and idiosyncratic things of that nature.

Anyway, I hope I'm helping and not just making life more complicated for everyone. Let me know. Oceanchaos (talk) 02:36, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Where on PFR are these records coming from. I couldn't find them. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 02:52, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Here, then expand the "More Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders Pages" tab. Lizard  (talk) 07:04, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * ^ You can get many of them there. I'm actually using the player game finder and player season finder query engines to look them up one at a time, which gives us (almost unlimited) flexibility about what statistics to include. Oceanchaos (talk) 16:15, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * When I click More all that pops up is "All Pros & Pro Bowlers Uniform Numbers Comebacks Blown Leads Executives Training Camps Future Schedules" . WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 20:33, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I was on mobile when I sent that, looks like the desktop site is configured differently. Lizard  (talk) 20:48, 16 February 2017 (UTC)
 * The first two columns of my table can be verified using the "career leaders" and "single season leaders" on the dropdown menu. The rest of them need to be queried (which I do via a script). I notice that there is already a List of Chicago Bears team records; similar pages exist for a lot of the MLB and a few NBA teams, but this is the only one for an NFL team, as far as I can tell... — talk 05:37, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Any guidance on this?

Ready to piss off the AFL folks?
Heh. What's the utility of keeping Category:Denver Broncos (AFL) players and Category:Denver Broncos players distinct? For other sports, when a team changes conferences/leagues, we rarely (never?) separate the categories. All players are equally a part of the team's history, and they're most defined by the team itself rather than by the league the team was a part of at a particular point in time. This seems especially useless for players playing around 1969, where they may have to be placed in two categories for a single team. Merge these types of things, maybe? ~ Rob 13 Talk 23:59, 18 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Support Yes, merge them. Please. Having separate categories for teams when they were in the AFL is needless and esoteric. If you searched Category:Houston Oilers players you'd expect to find George Blanda. Simple as that. Lizard  (talk) 00:14, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Agreed. If the AFL commissioner knocks on your door, we can discuss it with him. Tarl N.  ( discuss ) 00:54, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Or User:RemembertheAFL, who's responsible for most of the pro-AFL pushing that after a decade still plagues Wikipedia. Check his talk page. He must have been a pain to deal with, and I'm glad I never had to. Lizard  (talk) 01:06, 19 February 2017 (UTC)


 * Support the proposal to merge the categories for a single team. Cbl62 (talk) 02:36, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Just to be clear, this isn't a vote. It can't be, as all category merges go through WP:CFD. If we get support here, I'll do a mass CfD nom and post the link here. ~ Rob 13 Talk 02:53, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * You're right. It's a notvote.  Lizard  (talk) 02:54, 19 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'm cool with it. The fact there are separate categories is crazy. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  04:47, 19 February 2017 (UTC)

Discussion
Being discussed here. ~ Rob 13 Talk 07:22, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

Assistance requested
I recently came across the page No Fly Zone (Denver Broncos) and this page is a mess. Its poorly written and is written like a fansite instead of encyclopedia article. It also needs to be "wiki"fied. However, another concern I have about this article, is its notability. I attempted to find a policy that mentions notability for these types of articles and I could not find one, I'm guessing because one never was established. So I would like to get some thoughts, should a notability be established for these types of articles, then clean up this article, or should we just get rid of this article altogether.-- Rockchalk 717 04:14, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I stumbled upon this a few weeks ago and just left it alone because it was so bad. It's definitely a thing, but I'm not sure it's exclusively a Broncos thing. I've seen it used for other teams like the Cardinals and even for college teams. Lizard  (talk) 04:23, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Yeah I'm actually considering doing an WP:AFD for it just because this article is so bad I don't even know where to start on the cleanup. I think with some cleanup it has some potential especially if we can set up like Fearsome Foursome (American football) is. Even though it has its issues, its a lot better then this No Fly Zone article.-- Rockchalk 717 06:15, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
 * See Dome Patrol. Remember AfD is not a substitute for cleanup. A solid article can be written here. Someone just has to put in the time. Lizard  (talk) 06:21, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Need sources? Some resources
If you're improving NFL articles and need sources, consider the following resources available to all editors:


 * If you're a student or faculty at a university, you'll have access to many paid databases with high quality articles. Look especially for access to LexisNexis Academic (contains USA Today, New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) and ProQuest (many historical newspapers, some modern ones). Depending on your institution, searching for a certain player in the library's search engine may turn up empty even if substantial sources exist. You want to search in the individual databases that are known to have good sources for editing NFL articles in most cases, not the general library search engine. You'll also have access to Interlibrary Loan, which you can use to request sources held at other libraries. The usefulness of Interlibrary Loan depends on how generous your institution is with funding, as many lending libraries require the borrowing library to pay a fee for the service.
 * The Wikipedia Library allows editors without access to certain paid databases to obtain access for free. Of special interest to NFL editors are Newspapers.com (lots of historical American newspapers; note that they often don't have the newest stuff), HighBeam (more newspapers), and Newspaperarchive.com (even more newspapers, including some more recent ones).
 * When all else fails, turn to the Resource Exchange. If you're aware of the existence or likely existence of a source but are unable to access it, the Resource Exchange can help you out. Volunteers field requests to access sources via our own institutional access. We can then forward these sources onto you to help you create content. Between the many volunteers who help out at the Resource Exchange, we can access almost any source in the world. Note that we can only handle requests related to creating or improving specific Wikipedia articles.

Let me know if you have any questions. Happy editing! ~ Rob 13 Talk 07:39, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * This should really be pinned somewhere on the project page, or a put into a sub-page. WikiProject National Football League/Reliable sources would be nice to have. Lizard  (talk) 08:18, 26 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Feel free to create it. If you need any help from me in putting something together, let me know how I can help. ~ Rob 13 Talk 09:06, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Stat tables
Should they, or should they not be sort able? (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:33, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Sortable. Don't see why they shouldn't be. Lizard  (talk) 19:35, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Royals Life might wanna be part of this. He made me think of it because he made the stat table on Brandon Marshall (linebacker) non-sortable and I dunno why. (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  19:46, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Lizard Agreed. Crash Underride Well when it's "wikitable sortable" it stretches the stat table and gets annoying. When like the year is sortable, it's annoying to have three dots under it and makes it look weird... RoyalsLife 21:57, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I also think the bright color-coding is too striking for an encyclopedia that strives for professionalism. There are much better options, such as bolding and the † and ‡ symbols. If color coding must be used, it should be a very light shade. Lizard  (talk) 22:12, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * Then can we come up with an idea of how to fix the issues? (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  23:20, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * I'd say bold for league leaders and the † for career highs. Then maybe light shading for an NFL record. Lizard  (talk) 23:31, 27 February 2017 (UTC)
 * To quote my mother, "sounds like a weiner to me", but I was meaning the whole sortable thing. How can we fix it so it "doesn't look so bad"? (talk page stalker)  Crash Under  ride  23:34, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

NBA stat table for comparison. WikiOriginal-9 (talk) 00:17, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS. In addition, all projects treat this thing differently. – Sabbatino (talk) 07:15, 28 February 2017 (UTC)
 * WP:OTHERCONTENT is more relevant, but yes, if I were active in the NBA project I'd push to eliminate color coding there as well. I'd also suggest not denoting championships in the regular season stats table since there's no correlation between a single player's regular season stats and his team's post-season success. Lizard  (talk) 07:39, 28 February 2017 (UTC)