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nflreadr

ANALYTICS
Velocity0.0

R package nflreadr by nflverse — release notes from GitHub.

github.com/nflverse/nflreadr ↗

The nflverse data loader, whose releases are dictated by the NFL calendar and CRAN's archive policy

r-packagesports-analyticsdata-accessdeprecationcaching
◆Current state
nflreadr is the data access layer of the nflverse, wrapping cached downloads of play-by-play, roster, contract, charting and stats releases. Its growth phase peaked with 1.3.0, which added participation data, contracts, weekly rosters, officials and the players endpoint in a single release. Since then the work has been consolidation: 1.5.0 moved to v2 players data and reorganized player stats behind nflfastR's calculate_stats() with a summary_level argument, and 1.5.1 hard-deprecated qs file support after that package was removed from CRAN in January 2026.
◆Where it's heading
Two external clocks drive this package and neither is under its control. Feature releases land before the NFL season opens — 1.5.0 says so explicitly — and breaking changes are timed to that window. The other clock is CRAN's: losing the qs dependency forced a serialization format out of the package entirely, leaving parquet, rds and csv. The upstream coupling to nflfastR is tightening too, with player and team stats now sourced from its calculation functions rather than computed here.
◆Prediction
The pattern of a pre-season consolidation release is well established, so the next substantive version is likely timed to the following season's opener rather than to any internal roadmap.

◆Recent moves

  1. 3mo ago

    nflreadr 1.5.1

    Hard-deprecates qs file support after the qs package was removed from CRAN, leaving parquet, rds and csv, and adds file_type handling to load_teams(). A dependency disappearing from CRAN forcing a serialization format out of the package is the clearest example of how little of this release schedule is self-directed.

    View source ↗
  2. 11mo ago

    nflreadr 1.5.0

    A pre-season breaking release moving load_players() to v2 data with removed and renamed variables, routing load_player_stats() through nflfastR's calculate_stats() with a new summary_level argument, and adding load_team_stats(). Deepens the dependency on nflfastR for computation while nflreadr keeps the access layer.

    View source ↗
  3. 2y ago

    nflreadr 1.4.1

    Bug fixes across date coercion, schedule roof cleaning and join_coalesce() typing, plus exact computation of the season opener date. Housekeeping between the larger seasonal releases.

    View source ↗
  4. 2y ago

    nflreadr 1.4.0

    Adds defensive player stats and FTN charting data with a documented sub-48-hour post-game update cadence, and reworks nflverse_sitrep() to return structured attributes rather than only printing. Third-party charting arriving on a near-realtime schedule is a meaningful widening of what the package delivers.

    View source ↗
  5. 3y ago

    nflreadr 1.3.2

    Renames .clear_cache() to clear_cache(), adds join_coalesce(), and standardizes load_teams() row selection behind a current argument. Naming and consistency cleanups, released hours after 1.3.1.

    View source ↗
  6. 3y ago

    nflreadr 1.3.1

    Adds nflverse_game_id() and switches load_participation() to join play-by-play on it rather than the legacy old_game_id. Establishing a canonical game identifier is the kind of plumbing that quietly determines whether joins across nflverse datasets hold up.

    View source ↗