Load college football advanced defensive from the SportsDataverse data repo

Loads season-level advanced defensive team stats – one row per defense with havoc, TFL, drive-stop, and pass-rush aggregates. Published to the espn_cfb_adv_defensive release tag on the sportsdataverse-data repo.

Usage

load_espn_cfb_adv_defensive(
  seasons = most_recent_cfb_season(),
  ...,
  dbConnection = NULL,
  tablename = NULL
)

Arguments

seasons: A vector of 4-digit years associated with given college football seasons. Published coverage runs 2004 through the most recent season. Pass seasons = TRUE for every published season. (Min: 2004)
...: Additional arguments passed to an underlying function that writes the season data into a database.
dbConnection: A DBIConnection object, as returned by DBI::dbConnect()
tablename: The name of the data table within the database

Value

Returns a cfbfastR_data tibble.

col_name	types	description
def_pos_team_id	integer	ESPN team id of the team on defense. Present for every season 2004+.
def_pos_team	character
scrimmage_plays	integer	Number of plays from scrimmage (rushes plus passes), excluding special teams.
TFL	integer	Count of scrimmage plays the defense held to negative yardage (non-penalty, non-special-teams, ESPN statYardage below zero) plus every sack.
TFL_pass	integer	The TFL count restricted to plays classified as passes, so it covers sacks together with completions and laterals stopped behind the line.
TFL_rush	integer	The TFL count restricted to plays classified as rushes, that is rushing attempts the defense stopped for negative yardage.
havoc_total	integer
havoc_total_rate	double	Share of the defense's scrimmage plays producing a havoc event, a 0-to-1 fraction equal to havoc_total divided by scrimmage_plays.
fumbles	integer	Fumbles the defense forced, counted from plays whose narrative contains the phrase forced by, not the total number of fumbles on the play.
def_int	integer	Interceptions the defense recorded, counted from plays ESPN types as Interception Return or Interception Return Touchdown.
drive_stopped_rate	double	Percentage from 0 to 100 of the defense's scrimmage plays that occurred on drives ending in a punt, fumble, interception, or turnover on downs; the denominator is plays, not drives.
num_pass_plays	integer	Number of pass scrimmage plays the defense faced, the denominator behind havoc_total_pass_rate and sacks_rate.
havoc_total_pass	integer	Havoc events (tackle for loss, sack, interception, forced fumble, or pass breakup) recorded on the pass plays the defense faced.
havoc_total_pass_rate	double	havoc_total_pass divided by num_pass_plays, the defense's havoc rate against the pass as a 0-to-1 fraction.
sacks	integer
sacks_rate	double	Sacks divided by pass plays faced, the defense's per-pass-play sack rate as a 0-to-1 fraction.
pass_breakups	integer	Passes the defense broke up, counted from plays whose narrative contains the phrase broken up by.
havoc_total_rush	integer	Havoc events recorded on the rush plays the defense faced, in practice tackles for loss and forced fumbles.
havoc_total_rush_rate	double	Havoc events per rush play faced, the mean of the havoc flag over the defense's rush scrimmage plays.
game_id	integer
season	integer
week	integer

Author

Saiem Gilani

Examples

# \donttest{
  try(load_espn_cfb_adv_defensive(2004))
#> ── college football advanced defensive from the SportsDataverse data repo ──────
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-09-10 05:49:34 UTC
#> # A tibble: 926 × 22
#>    def_pos_team_id def_pos_team          scrimmage_plays   TFL TFL_pass TFL_rush
#>              <int> <chr>                           <int> <int>    <int>    <int>
#>  1              30 USC Trojans                        61     9        5        4
#>  2             259 Virginia Tech Hokies               57     6        3        3
#>  3             245 Texas A&M Aggies                   76     5        0        5
#>  4             254 Utah Utes                          67     7        1        6
#>  5             103 Boston College Eagles              63     8        6        2
#>  6            2050 Ball State Cardinals               70     6        1        4
#>  7              77 Northwestern Wildcats              77     7        0        7
#>  8            2628 TCU Horned Frogs                   93     6        0        6
#>  9            2638 UTEP Miners                        80    10        3        7
#> 10               9 Arizona State Sun De…              71     9        3        6
#> # ℹ 916 more rows
#> # ℹ 16 more variables: havoc_total <int>, havoc_total_rate <dbl>,
#> #   fumbles <int>, def_int <int>, drive_stopped_rate <dbl>,
#> #   num_pass_plays <int>, havoc_total_pass <int>, havoc_total_pass_rate <dbl>,
#> #   sacks <int>, sacks_rate <dbl>, pass_breakups <int>, havoc_total_rush <int>,
#> #   havoc_total_rush_rate <dbl>, game_id <int>, season <int>, week <int>
# }