The Stat Hole: Stupid Sports Stats From the Past Week - October 27, 2026
It's officially Fall Four season.
MLB World series. NFL season in full swing. NHL as well. And NBA basketball has tipped off. It won't last long, but gives a nice little spread to some dumb stat lookups from the past week in sports. Let's start with football Sunday for just a couple fun notes before we check in with some sad NBA starts.
Sunday NFL Stats
Another wild week. No one saw the Blitzkrieg coming from the 28-3rd Reich Falcons against one of the best teams in football and JJ "9 2x" McCarthy surprised as well in a classic "oh shit we didn't prepare for that guy" spot you see every now and again. You know the spots. Where defenses literally never even thought about that guy during practice in Don Draper style. We saw Case Keenum do this earlier in the year. There's always an random Andy Dalton game - or was years ago. But the most famous has to be the Baker Mayfield straight from the LAX tarmac game a few years ago before he pewterered out soon after.
Anyway - just a few notes from Sunday.
Mike Evans once gained 104 yards on an 80-yard touchdown drive
This stat is brought to you by now Mike Evans teammate Christian McCaffrey who gained more yards on the 49ers first drive than his team overall. Black had a four-yard run to even out a four-yard loss, was stuffed twice, and they incurred a holding penalty earlier on the drive. All in all he gained 69-yards on a 64-yard drive. Nice. Looking up the record on such a feat is none other than Evans back on November 16, 2011.
Joe Burrow is one of three quarterbacks to throw four touchdown passes in the second half after going scoreless in the first half
Wild second half for Bengals fans going back to delete all their first half tweets. It appears Joe Burrow went method acting in preparing for his Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll Halloween costume. Had to flip that around there to match the chronology. But since at least 1999, only Andrew Luck and Kirk Cousins have done this. Cousins in 2022 with the Vikings vs the Colts and Luck in 2013 vs the Bengals. Meaning the Vikings got the Colts, the Colts got the Bengals. And the Bengals got the Ravens. Time will tel which team the Ravens pull this move on next to continue the chain.
NBA Basketball
Opening night of the NBA was fantastic. It felt like the playoffs just picked back up with the intensity of play. Which is all to say the players actually tried. We'll see how long that lasts during the holiday season. Then came day two of the NBA season. I have a question for you and I'm not actually sure I know the answer myself. But who tried less of the following two options?
This NBA referee
The Phoenix Suns
Tough call here. On one hand we have a ref with a crystal clear view watch Lamelo Ball take six steps in a travel that was so egregious even the NBA "Acktually" crowd online didn't defend it nor did the official NBA Officials account. It really felt good loving the NBA after day one. I knew it couldn't last. On the other hand though - we have a feat that knocked the Bobcats off a rank #1 sad stat leaderboard. Don't feel too bad, they have many more. They held the previous record of largest deficit before scoring a point on the season.
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There's no worse feeling than being late on your first day at a new job. It appears the Suns started to rise six minutes late before putting in a free throw to make their literal presence felt. In the end they would lose by 41-points, which turned out to be NOT the worst loss of the night thanks to the running (away) of the Bulls who lost by 43.
You know what else wasn't a season high after just two days? Having a team come back from 21-points down. Celtics had the Suns covered on that after giving up a 23-point run in the 4th quarter in their colossal clover wilting of a performance. Even after getting the best version of Paul George they could have hoped for. Jayson Tatum might need a new Batman. Developing story.
UPDATE - I literally had that last paragraph written before the 76ers came back again down 29-points to the Cavs. Great call by adding "Developing story".
Caleb Wilson -45 Plus/Minus in his NBA debut
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The only point of this season for the Chicago Bulls is to allow Caleb Wilson to experiment, make mistakes, and improve into a star NBA baller. And boy did he give himself a chance to do that. Plus/Minus might be one of the most misleading stats in many cases which is why this doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but -45 is something. 45-points is like what teams in the 90s scored in the first half.
Cooper Flagg on here shows why this is really a silly stat. Especially since top drafted players are naturally starting off on the worst possible teams. Wait, you mean Darius Acuff Jr. didn't turn the Sacramento Kings right around? Not even White Chocolate could.
By the way - I had no idea the Jazz had a rookie named Bez Mbeng. I love this name. I hope he turns into a star that one day gets a Mike Breen "MBENG!". I won't even get greedy and hope for the double "Mbeng".
Jacob Misiorowski has pitched 30 of the 31 100mph pitches in recorded World Series histotory
This is only going to get more ridiculous if he pitches two more times. If I'm Noah Syndergaard I'm going around telling everyone that between me and Jacob Misiorowski, we've pitched all 31 100mph pitches in World Series history. Plus whatever that number grows too. The ole Bill Wennington move when he scored his only two points on a dish from Jordan to win the game for the Knicks. As Bill said in his presser - they combined for 57.
Sports Equinox Season
We enter the ephemeral point of the sports calendar where some point of the season is ongoing in all big-four pro sports. That means this part of late-October has the potential for a sports city equinox. Problem is neither of the World Series teams qualify as one of the handful of cities with a team in all four sports. But if we zoom out a touch and look at the state level, Wisconsin has all three of their teams playing: Packers, Bucks, and Brewers.
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Wisconsin hasn't seen a day in which all three teams (in whatever name) played since October 24th, 1926. Which means we've just crossed the 100-year mark. And guess what? It ain't happening this year either, even with the Brewers first World Series appearance since 1982. The Packers played Sunday on the Brewers first of just two off days for the World Series (credit MLB for not dragging that out), and the Pack have Thursday Night football the week after which just so happens to be that second off day for the World Series.
Too bad Wisconsin. I guess you can always hope for a rain out like they had in Cleveland a week ago, right? Never mind, both of these teams play in lame, soulless domes. The Bucks schedule also doesn't align anyway even if football and baseball did. But that would have been fun for Wisconsin. Maybe in the next hundred years when Timeless Ticket owners can finally cash in for another World Series.
Sports Staturday
I want to add something to this blog to make it a little more interactive. I used to open up the Twitter lines to take stat query requests on some combination of funny, or otherwise stupid and ridiculous areas of inquiry. So let's introduce this new segment: "Sports Staturday" where you can reply to my tween with whatever fun lookups you might be wondering about.
Gave this a go last Saturday. Absolute crickets. Sad.
Let's up those numbers this week.