Your most important NFL game day analysis tool tracks player arrests

Many years ago, I was a cub reporter covering the New York statehouse during a period of amazing corruption. In Albany, the late great investigative reporter Jack Newfield quipped that the arrest rate in the state legislature was higher than it was in the South Bronx. On a metaphorical level, he was right enough.

That brings us to the National Football League and what may be the single most important analysis tool for the 2014 season. It’s an interactive chart, based on data gathered by USA Today sportswriter Brent Schrotenboer, showing arrests of NFL players since 2000.

“Nifty” is an overused term in tech-dom, but this interactive chart qualifies. You can mix and match the data by team, position, crime, defense or offense. And it’s in full color. There are 730 entries. Is that is a lot or a little for a league the size of the NFL? Number-crunchers, the floor is yours.

This is not to make light of the seriousness of NFL players’ interactions with the criminal justice system; only to illustrate that the league’s problems with the conduct of its players go far beyond domestic abuse. One might ask what the number might be if the league took arrests of its players really seriously, and brought down the hammer.

At the moment, the Minnesota Vikings lead the league with 43 arrests, more than twice as many as the reputed “bad boys” of the NFL, the Oakland Raiders. Moreover, the interactive chart seems to be lagging behind Schrotenboer’s data and the news cycle -- Ray Rice’s domestic violence arrest in February is in his database but not on the chart. Adrian Peterson’s indictment Friday for injuring his son is on Schrotenboer’s list but also not yet on the chart, so the Vikings figure is due for an update.

(Hat tip to Deadspin, where a commenter questions why there’s no category for owners’ crimes.)

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