Analyzing Career Scoring Leaders
aka #KickyWatch and #AlexDWatch
Welcome back to another issue of The Specialist where this time, we're actually going to talk about specialists!
As part of Adelie de Pengu's contract demands, we here in Colorado celebrated Kicky Day this past game, in commemoration of the team's favorite kicky boi, Silver Banana. Banana has been the Yeti kicker since S20 - making this season his fifth. While to most people that's not a lot of seasons (it's not even at regression yet), to the Yeti this is an important milestone as no kicker has stayed the primary Yeti kicker for this long since Micycle McCormick's S6-S11 tenure.
Anyone who has seen the Career Scoring Leaders in the NFL knows that kickers are at the top of the list, as every time a team scores, the kicker has to get involved in some way or another (extra points and field goals - two point attempts don't exist in my worldview!), and so the points can add up quickly. Add in the fact that Passing TDs technically don't count to this list, and you have a perfect recipe to make kickers the league's scoring kings. And so, this raised the question for us...
How close is Banana to the Colorado Yeti scoring record?
We had a pretty good hunch it was just a race between Micycle and Banana, but there's nothing quite like being extra sure of things. So, I went and pulled out the web scraper and went to town.
This time, I went and pulled all the statistics from the Box Scores of each game. Why not just take the end of season stats? Because some players are traded mid-season, and I wanted to get an accurate number of points for the time they spent on each team. Anyways, by taking and combining the Rushing, Receiving, Special Teams, Defensive, and Kicking box scores, I can easily total up how many points a player has scored.
Sidenote here - the box score scraping is a lot more comprehensive that I'm letting on here. Every table on a standard box score page (statistics as well as scoring) is sorted by Season and GameID here: https://github.com/infinitempg/play_by_p.../Boxscores. You can also do some scavenging to find my code on how to do it (it's just pandas/BS4 fun).
Here is what I found.
Career Scoring Leaders
Top 25:
Code:
Rank Player Points
------ ------------------------------ --------
1 Turkleton, T. 1342
2 Dasistwirklichseinnachname, A. 1222
3 Fulture, K. 1122
4 Jackson, D. 1114
5 Crisco, A. 1024
6 Forfeit, N. 1001
7 Donaldson, N. 994
8 Taylor, O. 876
9 Blewitt, I. 872
10 Madlad, B. 834
11 Smallwood, D. 816
11 Harris, S. 816
13 Brown, M. 774
14 Brand, F. 735
15 Leg, P. 727
16 Willie, T. 726
17 Frost, A. 724
18 Westfield, B. 702
19 Prohaska, H. 673
20 Meoff, B. 604
21 Mackworthy, R. 600
22 Maddox, E. 570
22 Gump, F. 570
24 Yates, J. 552
25 LeClair, A. 540
The top 25 scoring leaderboard is a marvel on its own. Turk Turkleton, the longest tenured kicker in league history, is unsurprisingly in first place - but Alex D. is closing in on him. As of S25 W5, he is only 120 points behind Turk. It's not unreasonable to think that Alex will catch up and surpass Turk if he plays out this season and the next - he has averaged 118.8 points per season, with his two best showings coming in the last two seasons (S24 - 141 points, S23 - 132 points).
We then pass two more kicking legends in Kulture Fulture and Dean Jackson (I guess that bad extra season for Fulture ends up being worth it huh) before we hit recently retired Alfredo Crisco. Shame 65 yard field goals don't count as extra points huh. Either way, an impressive career from Crisco lands him at #5, with #6 and the last player over 1000 points - Forfeit. While I have some opinions about Forfeit, there is no doubting that his lengthy career on the powerhouse Wraiths puts him as one of the most prolific scorers of league history. Neo Donaldson, another kicker with a long career, finishes just 6 points short of 1000.
After Donaldson there is a pretty big drop, and it's there we hit our first big surprise! The highest scoring non-kicker in the NFL is Jerry Rice, in 38th place all time with 1,256 points over 19 seasons. The ISFL's highest scoring non-kicker cashes in at #8 all time - Hall of Fame running back Owen Taylor with 876 points. Taylor managed to get 123 rushing touchdowns (most all time) and 23 receiving touchdowns. Second on the career rushing TDs list is RB/WR Darren Smallwood, who sneaks in behind Iyah Blewitt and Bradley Madlad at T-11th place with 816 points (tied with Stephen Harris). We see another drop before reaching another running back - Marquise Brown - who also happens to be third all time in rushing touchdowns. That's three running backs in the top 13 - for comparison, Emmitt Smith is all the way down at #57 in NFL history.
But hang on a second - Jerry Rice was a wide receiver! When do we see our first wideout in the ISFL record books? We have to pass (still active) Forthe Brand (#14, 735 points) and Peg Leg (#15, 727 points) before we get to Trey Willie and his 726 points. Willie's 118 touchdowns is still the career record for wide receivers, with second place Bradley Westfield's 109 touchdowns (#18, 702 points) slots him in just behind #17 Alex Frost.
Now that we're under 700 points I won't mention everyone by name, but some names of note: #19 Herbert Prohaska (673 points) and #22 Forrest Gump (570 points) are still active. Prohaska needs 29 points to advance up a spot, while Gump is tied with Errol Maddox at #22 and would 30 points to advance past Reg Mackworthy.
You can see the list of every player who has ever scored a point (not passing TDs though) here: https://www.datawrapper.de/_/C1Mbq/
Season Scoring Leaders
Code:
Rank S Player Points
------ --- ------------- --------
1 9 Smallwood, D. 180
2 7 Harris, S. 166
3 10 Taylor, O. 162
4 3 Ronaldo, C. 159
5 9 Blewitt, I. 158
6 6 Harris, S. 152
7 10 Leg, P. 145
8 9 Taylor, O. 144
8 10 Turkleton, T. 144
10 24 Crisco, A. 143
Now we'll get into some spicy information really quickly.
In 20 of the 24 completed ISFL seasons, a kicker was the top scorer as expected. However, just like the NFL (LaDanian Tomlinson, 2006), the top spot in single season scoring goes to a historic running back season. Darren Smallwood's S9 campaign on what was arguably the best ISFL team ever puts him over Stephen Harris' S7 campaign by 14 points. Owen Taylor is at #3 all time with his S10 season, and also at #8 with his S9 season.
Interestingly enough, the top 3 single season point totals in NFL history all go to running backs (LT 2006, Paul Hornung 1960, Shaun Alexander 2005). Priest Holmes 2003 and Marshall Faulk 2000 also fall at #7 and #9 respectively, so our single season points records actually seem to fall to kickers more than our real-life counterparts.
Team Scoring Leaders
Now we get to the reason why I started this project - career points leaders for each team. Like I said previously, I wanted this to be as accurate as possible, and so it accounts for mid-season trades by looking at the boxscores instead of the season tables. I won't do all the teams, but I will point out where there are notable actives chasing records.
Let's start with Colorado:
Code:
Rank Player Points
------ ------------- --------
1 McCormick, M. 524
2 Banana, S. 500
3 Bishop, J. 450
4 Owens, A. 366
5 Miller, H. 336
As of Friday's W5 game, Silver Banana is only 24 points behind Micycle McCormick. It's almost a certainty that he will pass Micycle this season, and so Yeti eyes will be glued to the televisions to see that happen. Legendary wideouts James Bishop and Howard Miller also make their spots on this list at #3 and #5, and despite only being a Yeti for 4 seasons, Ashley Owens manages to snag #4 on this list.
Arizona:
Code:
Rank Player Points
------ ---------------- --------
1 Jackson, D. 1114
2 Mackworthy, R. 600
3 Jay-Jaymison, J. 469
4 Ronaldo, C. 393
5 Shady, S. 390
5 Donut, S. 390
J5 has been the Arizona kicker for 4 seasons (someone check this - I think he might have been a send down for some time?) and is already at #3 on this list. Arizona and Colorado are both founding members of the league but have pretty poor scoring records to their name outside Dean Jackson. Saba Donut, with one touchdown, can also jump up to #4.
Chicago:
Code:
Rank Player Points
------ ------------------ --------
1 Fulture, K. 517
2 Sidekick, S. 281
3 O'Leary, S. 240
4 Danielsson, A. 216
5 Torenson, S. 120
Chicago came into existence in S16, but Kulture Fulture was sure to take that time to cement his spot at the top. Sam Sidekick and Sean O'Leary are both still active for this team, and I think Sidekick could easily take the top spot. O'Leary I'm not so sure on.
San Jose:
Code:
Rank Player Points
------ ------------- --------
1 Donaldson, N. 661
2 Blewitt, I. 651
3 Weston, S. 342
4 Flash, X. 336
5 McDairmid, M. 309
Matty McDairmid is also jumping up the leaderboard here, and with 33 points can take his spot at #3 all time. There's still a while to go before he breaks Donaldson's record, but I think it's possible with 3 or 4 more seasons.
Yellowknife:
Code:
Rank Player Points
------ ------------- --------
1 Forfeit, N. 1001
2 Smalls, D. 448
3 Hanyadi, M. 444
4 Kennedy, E. 408
5 Swift, N. 360
Dougie Smalls being expansion'd away from Yellowknife is a blessing for Matthias Hanyadi. The former MVP only needs one touchdown to take #2 all time, with no real competition for his spot for a long time.
Oh boy you've reached the end! TL;DR - Banana is 24 points away and Alex D is 120 points away.
Links to things:
- Career Scoring Leaderboard for all players who have ever scored - https://www.datawrapper.de/_/C1Mbq/
- Boxscores of all games - https://github.com/infinitempg/play_by_p.../Boxscores (postseason box scores are in a separate folder)
- Team Scoring Leaderboards - https://wiki.sim-football.com/view/Caree...rs#By_Team
- Season Scoring Leaderboards - https://wiki.sim-football.com/view/Seaso...ng_Leaders