Historical Participation Data and Starting Lineups on Pro Football Reference
Pro Football Reference now provides full game-level participation data and starting lineups going all the way back to 1920, the inaugural season of the American Professional Football Association (APFA), which would later become the NFL. This coverage spans every season the league has played, as well as every season of the All-America Football Conference (AAFC, 1946–1949) and the American Football League (AFL).
For each game in our database, you can now see:
- Which players participated in the game, even if they did not record any statistics we currently track.
- Which players started the game, indicated by a star in the GS (Games Started) column.
- Full starting lineups for both teams, displayed beneath the player statistics on every box score.
Prior to this expansion, we could only confirm that a player had appeared in a game if they had recorded offensive statistics or an interception. Because game-level tackles are not available for many of these older seasons, most defensive players, linemen, and special teams players had no statistical footprint in our database even if they played in every game. The new participation data fills that gap.
Career game log pages now include a row for every game a player appeared in, regardless of whether they recorded a tracked statistic. For example, a Hall of Fame two-way player like
Chuck Bednarik now has a complete game-by-game record on his game log page, with stars in the GS column marking the games he started.
This is especially useful for:
- Two-way players from the early eras whose contributions were largely defensive
- Offensive and defensive linemen who rarely appeared in traditional box score stats
- Players whose careers predated comprehensive defensive stat tracking
A Note on Early-Era Lineups
Please note that the further back you go, particularly in the first half of the 1940s, players generally played on both sides of the ball, and thus there were only 11 starters per side, rather than 22.
Additionally, there are known discrepancies between game-level and season-level appearances for many players, especially in the early era of the league. Before participation data was officially tracked, information was often spotty, and frequently there were conflicting sources that are difficult to reconcile. Please see the
following blog post for a more in-depth discussion of the issue.