Roster discrepencies between PFR and Neft/Cohen Encyclopedia

[Bryan]

The Denver flipcard lists Besana as the third-string QB after Ferguson and Ken Johnson.

Ken Johnson isn't listed on the PFR Buffalo Bills 1977 roster, either. Taken at face value, one would believe that the 1977 Buffalo Bills went the entire season with only one QB (Ferguson) on their active roster.

You might want to try contacting PFR.com and asking them in a general way if they credits games to a person who is on the 53-man roster but is inactive all season:

I'm not understanding what you are saying. Guys like Besana and Ken Johnson weren't "inactive all season"; they were on the active roster but did not appear in a game. It's already known that PFR doesn't give roster credit to these types of players. My question was if PFR willingly excludes these players based on philosophical reasons, or if they just don't have the information regarding guys like Besana and Ken Johnson. If it's the latter, then my point with all of this is that the information DOES exist, so, in my humble opinion, it should be utilized by PFR.

[Mark L. Ford]

I've never understood the rationale for not including a player if he didn't actually play in a game. If he was under contract, getting paid, and on the official roster list for any period of time, he was a member of the team.

I hope that, someday, someone will undertake the project of identifying the practice squad/ taxi squad members. Although I think it would be a distraction in an official record of player stats, such as pro-football-reference or Neft/Cohen or the retired Total Football series, I think that there should be a supplement that preserves the complete rosters. Although you might not have been referring to something that inclusive, I think they're worth tracking and for the same reasons that you've identified -- under contract and getting paid -- if for no other reason than to fill in the gaps for the career records of those players who eventually ended up playing in another leagues. If anyone's up for such a project, and perhaps someone's actually working on that now, I'd enjoy helping research it.