In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, we decided to celebrate in true m-Power fashion: We made a data-driven web application! Better yet, it’s all about Thanksgiving Football! We grabbed all the Thanksgiving Football Game statistics we could find and put them in a database. Then, we created a few handy web applications that answer questions like:
- What is my team’s record on Thanksgiving Day?
- Which teams have made the most appearances on Thanksgiving day?
- Who won last year (or any year, for that matter)?
Sounds exciting, right? You can find it here: Thanksgiving Football Statistics.
Bonus!
While we were building the applications, we ran across some great facts about the Thanksgiving Day football games. So, we’ve pulled some of the more interesting “fun facts” and listed them below. Enjoy!
Thanksgiving Football Fun Facts
- The Detroit Lions(82 appearances) and Dallas Cowboys(54 appearances) have appeared in Thanksgiving Games most frequently, but…have never played each other.
- The Lions and the Cowboys have only ever played home games on Thanksgiving (which explains the first fact).
- Buffalo Bills running back O.J. Simpson holds the NFL record for most rushing yards (273) in a Thanksgiving game.
- Reggie White won John Madden’s first-ever “Turkey Leg” award, which was given to the MVP of the Thanksgiving game starting in 1989.
- The Jacksonville Jaguars are the only current team who have never played on Thanksgiving Day.
- The only current teams who are winless on Thanksgiving are the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Cincinnati Bengals, and Jacksonville Jaguars (because they haven’t played)
- The Detroit Lions have the most Thanksgiving day wins (37), as well as the most Thanksgiving day losses (43).
- The Brooklyn Dodgers are in the top 10 teams with the most Thanksgiving Day appearances…despite having folded in 1945.
Finally, from all of us here at mrc, we wish you safe travels and a very happy Thanksgiving!