Load college football advanced defensive players from the SportsDataverse data repo — load_espn_cfb_adv_defensive

Loads season-level advanced defensive player stats – one row per player with tackles, TFL, sacks, pressures, and coverage counting stats. Published to the espn_cfb_adv_defensive_players release tag on the sportsdataverse-data repo.

Usage

load_espn_cfb_adv_defensive_players(
  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	Display name of the team on defense (e.g. 'Ohio State Buckeyes'). Held an ESPN team id until the 2026-08 republish; the id now lives in def_pos_team_id.
player_name	character	Display name of the defender.
sacks	integer	Sacks recorded by the defender. Available from 2005 on; null for 2004.
sacks_yards	integer	Yards lost by the offense on the defender's sacks. Available from 2005 on; null for 2004.
fumble_recoveries	integer	Fumbles recovered by the defender. Available for every season 2004+.
fumble_recoveries_yards	integer	Yards returned on the defender's fumble recoveries. Available for every season 2004+.
game_id	integer
season	integer
week	integer
pass_breakups	integer	Passes broken up by the defender. Available from 2005 on; null for 2004.
interceptions	integer	Passes intercepted by the defender. Available from 2014 on; null for 2004-2013, which ESPN ships without interception statistics in this block.
interceptions_yards	integer	Yards returned on the defender's interceptions. Available from 2014 on; null for 2004-2013.
forced_fumbles	integer	Fumbles forced by the defender. Available from 2005 on; null for 2004, which ESPN ships with only the fumble-recovery statistics.

Author

Saiem Gilani

Examples

# \donttest{
  try(load_espn_cfb_adv_defensive_players(2004))
#> ── college football advanced defensive players from the SportsDataverse data rep
#> ℹ Data updated: 2026-09-10 05:49:35 UTC
#> # A tibble: 1,590 × 10
#>    def_pos_team_id def_pos_team    player_name interceptions interceptions_yards
#>              <int> <chr>           <chr>               <int>               <int>
#>  1              30 USC Trojans     Ronald Nunn             0                   0
#>  2              30 USC Trojans     Lofa Tatupu             1                  32
#>  3            2050 Ball State Car… Donta Smith             0                   0
#>  4            2050 Ball State Car… David Gater             1                  29
#>  5            2628 TCU Horned Fro… Marvin God…             1                  32
#>  6              77 Northwestern W… Dominique …             1                   0
#>  7            2638 UTEP Miners     James Delg…             1                   0
#>  8               9 Arizona State … Mike Davis…             1                   8
#>  9               9 Arizona State … Quency Dar…             1                   5
#> 10               9 Arizona State … Emmanuel F…             2                  75
#> # ℹ 1,580 more rows
#> # ℹ 5 more variables: fumble_recoveries <int>, fumble_recoveries_yards <int>,
#> #   game_id <int>, season <int>, week <int>
# }