The NFL All-Available Team

Hello, and welcome back to the blog.

I have published at least once to this site every year since I started it, so I feel like I have to keep the streak alive with two days left in 2025. I've been focused on work so much (and successfully so - I've found a great career with plenty of growth already achieved and more to come!) but I have found some time to do some side projects.

The one I've been focusing on the most is the NFL All-Available Team - this was a project I started working on after the 2023 NFL season but abandoned it. I recently decided to revisit it and I'm just about finished so I feel confident to start doing some publishing of my findings!

Joe Burrow was the NFL's most-available quarterback in 2024. (Charles Baus/Cal Sport Media)

Here's the gist of it: My best friends at pro-football-reference.com (they don't know me, but I know them...it's a very healthy relationship) have a database dating back to 2012 of each team's annual snap counts by player. What I've done is compiled them into a spreadsheet (long time readers know my love of a good NFL stat spreadsheet) to determine which players at each position were on the field for the highest proportion of plays their specific unit (offense/defense/special teams).

I did it by position because different positions have different proportions of snaps they typically appear. For instance, every single offensive lineman I will be naming "all-available" played every single offensive snap for their respective teams in the given years they earned "all-available" honors. Meanwhile, no placekicker since 2012 has played in more than 48 percent of their team's special teams snaps.

I also ranked players by snap count percentage - in other words, a player to record 900 snaps in a year that their team was on offense for 1,000 plays (90%) would score higher than a player at the same position who appeared in 1,000 plays for an offense which took the field 1,200 times (83%). In a case where multiple players recorded the same percentage of snaps, the tie went to the player who was in more total plays. I mostly used this tiebreaker for offensive linemen (the iron horses of pro football), but I did occasionally break ties for other positions as well.

In the coming series, I'll be highlighting the most available players at each position each year based on this methodology, as well as crowning a "Most Available Player" for each season since 2012. I'll also be including some other fun tidbits, including an honorable mention for any player who appeared in 100 percent of their team's snaps without earning a spot on that year's All-Available team because players at their positions played in more total snaps.

Two quick disclaimers: pro-football-reference.com states in their snap count logs that all logs are approximate and unofficial - PFR does such amazing work, though, I'm sure theirs would be the most accurate list you could find! Also, while I do have the stats fully compiled through 2024, I will likely not be consistent with posting these. But we'll see!

I hope that if you're reading this, you're doing well. Remember to take care of yourselves and each other, spread love and kindness, and we'll see each other again in 2026!