Comparing NFL Football Python Packages
In the spirit of the NFL regular season concluding and playoffs beginning soon, I wondered what packages Python had in the NFL stats space. Below, I have compiled my notes below on each of the libraries I found for the NFL in Python.
After a first pass through, there is no runaway favorite. In Python, we say "there should be one obvious way to do it". This doesn't seem the case for NFL stats. In a somewhat rare occurrence, the Python community offers a graveyard of abandoned or incompatible projects with modern Python. Ultimately, this probably stems from the NFL's inability to provide a consistent stats API or feed over time. This may be one of the few times where the R community has better resources available, like the nfldata package in their ecosystem.
Listed in Order of Most Recently Updated Project
- nfl_data_py (Github)
- nfl_data_py is a Python library for interacting with NFL data sourced from nflfastR, nfldata, dynastyprocess, and Draft Scout.
- Github repo status: active
- Github last updated: 3 months ago
- notable dependencies: requires pandas<2.0,>=1.0
- This package seems to be most recently updated, but it requires an outdated version of pandas. I suppose it is the best option since it is updated within the past 3 months, but I was unable to install it on Python 3.12.
- sportsipy (Github)
- A free sports API written for Python
- Github repo status: "This project is no longer undergoing active development. Please consider opening a pull request for any new features or bug fixes to be reviewed and merged."
- Github repo last updated: 2022
- I was able to get the sportsipy package installed via pip, but upon attempting to use it I saw this message: "The requested page returned a valid response, but no data could be found. Has the season begun, and is the data available on www.sports-reference.com?"
- nflfastpy (Github)
- a port of nflfastR, from the R programming language
- Github repo status: "This repository has been archived by the owner on Nov 18, 2022. It is now read-only."
- Github repo last updated: 2021
- notable dependencies: matplotlib
- This package installed on Python 3.12, but when I tried to import the package, I saw a ValueError from matplotlib. Troubleshooting required.
- nfldb (Github)
- nfldb is a relational database bundled with a Python module to quickly and conveniently query and update the database with data from active games. Data is imported from nflgame, which in turn gets its data from a JSON feed on NFL.com's live GameCenter pages.
- Github repo status: "THIS PROJECT IS UNMAINTAINED."
- Github repo last updated: 2018
- notable dependencies: nflgame package (requires Python 2)
- nflgame (pypi)
- nflgame is an API to retrieve and read NFL Game Center JSON data.
- pypi last updated: 2016
- notable dependencies: nflgame requires Python 2.6+ and does not yet work with Python 3
Conclusion
This is one of the few times where I've been unable to find a Python package that does what I want: extend an API to view NFL stats. I could try some of these packages with an earlier version of Python 3, but I'd prefer to use something that works with a more current version of Python. My suggestion to anyone looking for NFL stats via Python is: you may need to roll your own package, or find something like the SportsRadar API or SportsData.io API. Another option might be to find an existing dataset like the Dynasty Process data on Github.