Okay, so I’ve been trying to get my hands on Brandon Aubrey’s game-by-game stats. It wasn’t as straightforward as I thought it would be, so I’m documenting the whole process here, in case anyone else runs into the same issues.
First Attempts – The Obvious Stuff
I started, like anyone would, by hitting up the usual sports sites. You know, the big names. I figured they’d have a neat table with all his kicks, distances, whether they were good or not, all that jazz. Nope. Plenty of season totals, overall percentages, but nothing broken down by each game.
Digging Deeper – Finding Bits and Pieces
Then I started digging through individual game recaps, news articles, whatever I could find. This was a pain. I’d find, like, one article mentioning a 55-yard field goal in one game, and then another article talking about a missed extra point in a different game. It was like putting together a really frustrating puzzle, and I was definitely missing pieces.
Compiling My Own Data – Getting Scrappy
So, I ended up having to basically build my own spreadsheet. Yeah, super tedious. I went back through all those game recaps, box scores, anything I could get my hands on. I started marking down:
- Date of the game
- Opponent
- Field Goals Attempted
- Field Goals Made – And the distances of each!
- Extra Points Attempted
- Extra Points Made
The Spreadsheet Struggle – Not Pretty, But Functional
My spreadsheet isn’t pretty. It’s just a raw dump of data. But, it’s functional. I can finally see, game by game, how Aubrey performed. I can see if he had a rough game, a perfect game, whatever. I can kind of track his consistency (or inconsistency) over the season.
The Takeaway – Data Isn’t Always Easy
Honestly, the biggest thing I learned is that sometimes, the data you want just isn’t readily available in a nice, neat package. Sometimes you gotta get your hands dirty and build it yourself. It’s more work, for sure, but at least now I have the specific breakdown I was looking for. I might try some graphing on next step to see if my data can become more visually.
