NFL Player Hometowns: Offense Positions Versus Defensive Linemen

In a previous blog, “Fantasy Football Fun: A Look at the Offense Side”, Matia posted an intriguing comment: “It would be interesting to see if certain states are more likely to produce offense positions or defensive linemen — you could control for state population and see if California and Florida really can stand up next to some big stereotypical football states like Texas and Oklahoma.”

In an attempt to explore that issue, the hometowns of all defensive and offensive players on teams that were in the playoffs this season were scraped off of player profiles on espn.com, the numbers aggregated and geocoded to the state level and the information mapped in terms of both proportions and per capita equivalents.

Looks like, at least for the players whose hometowns were mapped, that Florida, California and Texas stand out as big NFL football player producers; however, the picture does indeed change quite dramatically when you control for population.

Proportion of Players by Hometown State

Defense

Offense

Per Capita Players by Hometown State

Defense

Offense

Other information that was compiled on the attributes of players by hometown states include: average years pro, average weight and average age of players. The full datasets for both offense positions or defensive linemen are available at geocommons.com for mapping.