Methodology

IMG Academy → NFL follows NFL players who played football at IMG Academy. Camps and training-only attendance do not qualify. Every player in the registry has a published affiliation source and a stable NFL player ID; nobody is matched by name.

When a player counts as having played

• A positive offensive, defensive or special-teams snap count.
• A recorded role in a play, such as a tackle, target or carry. Penalty-only mentions do not count.
• A positive box-score statistic.

If a player has recorded plays but zero snaps, the sources disagree. That is labeled Conflicting evidence, and social posts wait for review.

When a player did not play

Absence is described only by what a source states.

• Inactive for the game: the weekly roster lists the player as inactive.
• Practice squad: the weekly roster lists the player on the practice squad, not elevated.
• Reserve list: the player is on a reserve list. The reason is not inferred.
• No snaps recorded: the player was active but is absent from a complete snap-count table.
• Participation unverified: the evidence is incomplete. Missing data is never treated as a DNP.

Illness, injury and benching are never guessed. Injury designations appear as that week's pregame report, not as proof of absence.

Checks behind every edition

• Final scores agree between the schedule and the play-by-play end-of-game record.
• Passing, rushing and receiving yards reconcile with recorded plays. If they disagree, that player's stat line is withheld and labeled.
• Duplicate plays, ambiguous identities, stale required feeds and score disagreements stop the edition.

These are consistency checks within nflverse data, not an independent audit against official gamebooks.

Key plays and expected points

Each card shows up to three key moments. For a defender they start with what the defense did: interceptions, fumble recoveries, forced fumbles, safeties, sacks, tackles for loss, passes defended, QB hits and 3rd- or 4th-down stops, then other plays the defense won. Tackles at the end of an opponent's long gain come last. The card's drawing shows the first key moment that can be drawn, so a defender's interception is the one on his card. For an offensive player they are the plays with the largest swings, good or bad.

Cards and the box score run in the order the editor set: the featured player first, then everyone else by a simple score (touchdowns, takeaways, sacks, 100-yard games, passes defended, tackles and yardage). The editor can set a different order for a given week.

Expected points added (EPA) measure how much a play changed the offense's chances of scoring, given the down, distance and field position. Each moment says what that meant from the player's side, such as "Good for the Browns defense: the Buccaneers lost 0.6 expected points." EPA belongs to the whole play and all 22 players on it: it describes the play, not a grade for one player.

Player pages and the play explorer

Every alum has a season page and a permanent page for each published week that includes him. A week page lists every play on which the play-by-play names him: as passer, runner, target, tackler, or on a charted defensive play such as a sack or pass defended. Most snaps never appear there, and offensive linemen are rarely named in play-by-play at all, so snaps and team results come first.

Field diagrams show where a play started and ended: the line of scrimmage, the first-down marker and the ball's path. They are not a tracking diagram, and no player movement is drawn. An interception is drawn as the throw up to the spot where the pass was aimed, marked with an X; the return is not drawn. Fumbles, laterals, penalties and special-teams plays are shown as text only for now. The offense always moves left to right, like a TV broadcast. The arrow and its +/− label show which way the ball went; the path is drawn in the alum's team color when the play helped his team and in gray when it hurt. Each play also says it in words: "Big play" (it helped by 2 or more expected points), "Helped" or "Hurt".

Each season page has a "By the numbers" section with the same season in analytics terms: expected points added per play and success rate (the share of plays with positive expected points added), completion percentage over expected (from nflverse's completion-probability model; the weekly tracking line uses the NFL Next Gen Stats model instead), target and air-yards shares, and impact plays per 100 defensive snaps. Each shows its sample, and a rate stays a dash until it has its minimum sample.

Season lines add up every published week. Shares are season totals divided by team totals, and rates appear only after a meaningful sample: 50 dropbacks, 30 carries, 15 targets or 100 defensive snaps. A season line also notes "based on N of M weeks" when a week is missing a field; a share only uses weeks where both the player's and the team's numbers exist; a play with zero or missing expected points is counted as neutral, neither positive nor negative; and defensive lines include tackles.

When an alum changes or leaves an NFL team, his card and player page say so, based on the weekly and current NFL rosters. The reason (a trade, a waiver claim, a signing) appears only with a link to the NFL, a team site, ESPN or the AP.

Reading the charted lines

The short lines under a player's numbers say what a source recorded, not how well he played. Charted numbers are a person's judgment and can be revised. "Thrown at in coverage" counts the throws on which Pro Football Reference's charting named him the defender; it does not say he alone decided the result. A pressure is a hurry, a hit on the quarterback or a sack, and a shared sack counts as half. Tackles include assists, and a missed tackle is charted when he should have brought the ball carrier down. FTN Data marks a pass catchable when it was on target and not knocked away, and contested when the receiver faced contact at the catch point; its charted targets are the throws that could be matched to the play-by-play. Separation is how far away the nearest defender was when a pass was caught or fell incomplete. "Expected" numbers compare what happened with an NFL Next Gen Stats model built from player-tracking data; they are not grades.

Up next

The next game comes from the league schedule for the player's current team. Kickoff times are Eastern. A bye is shown as a bye; an unknown time or venue is shown as TBD. Next-game availability is not shown because Wednesday's practice reports may not exist yet.

Headlines

A draft headline is written from the edition's checked data, then checked again: every number must appear in the data, only players who played can be featured, and no absence is explained without a source. The editor approves every headline before it publishes.

Schedule and corrections

Editions publish on Wednesdays during the regular season and postseason, after every game of the week is final. NFL statistics can be corrected later in the week.

Sources and independence

Data comes from nflverse (CC BY 4.0); snap counts and charted coverage, pass-rush, tackling and contact numbers originate with Pro Football Reference. Target charting (catchable balls, drops, contested catches) is FTN Data via nflverse, used under CC BY-SA 4.0; we summarize it as counts. Charted numbers involve judgment, arrive later than box scores, and are left off a card rather than guessed when they are missing or inconsistent. Coverage numbers describe the defender charted in coverage on a throw, not a grade. Every edition links its data file and source checksums. Team logos and player photographs are not used. This is a personal project by Bryce Murphy. It is not an official IMG Academy publication and is not endorsed by IMG Academy, the NFL, its teams or its players.