The Scenario
You are a football analytics writer. Your editor wants a Georgia 2023 efficiency breakdown on the site by Thursday. The hook: Georgia dominated that season — but was it offense, defense, or special-teams PPA that drove it? You need every game's PPA numbers to find out.
The CollegeFootballData.com API has game-level PPA data. It is Tuesday morning. You have the analysis framework in your head but no data in front of you.
The bad version:
- You look up the PPA endpoint, figure out the parameters for a single game
- You realize you need to loop across every game in the 2023 season — fifteen regular-season games plus two playoff games
- You write the loop, get the data, and find the PPA metric names are abbreviated in ways you did not expect
- You spend an hour cross-referencing the API docs to understand what "ppa.overall" versus "ppa.passing" means in context
- It is Wednesday afternoon and you have two paragraphs written.
The fast version is one prompt.
The Easy Way: One Prompt in SheetXAI
SheetXAI knows the PPA endpoint structure and translates the abbreviated field names into readable column headers.
Open the SheetXAI sidebar and type:
Fetch all 2023 game-level PPA stats for Georgia from College Football Data and write game ID, opponent, offensive PPA, defensive PPA, and total PPA into this Google Sheet.
SheetXAI pulls the full season, maps the field names to readable headers, and writes seventeen rows — one per game. You are writing the analysis by Tuesday afternoon.
What You Get
A clean table with seventeen rows — one per Georgia 2023 game:
- Game ID and opponent — context for each data point
- Offensive PPA — Georgia's predicted points added per play on offense
- Defensive PPA — how much Georgia's defense suppressed opponent PPA
- Total PPA — the combined efficiency score for the game
The column headers are readable, not abbreviated. You do not need the API docs open to understand what you are looking at.
Sort by offensive PPA to find the games where Georgia's offense was genuinely efficient versus the ones where the defense carried the result. That is your thesis.
What If the Data Is Not Quite Ready
PPA analysis usually leads to follow-up questions. SheetXAI handles them inline.
When you want to add passing and rushing PPA separately
Offensive PPA is a single number, but the story is often in the split between passing and rushing efficiency.
In the Georgia PPA sheet, add two more columns: passing offensive PPA and rushing offensive PPA for each game. Keep the existing columns. Re-sort by total offensive PPA descending.
When you want to compare Georgia's defensive PPA to the SEC average
The defensive PPA number only means something in context. You need a benchmark.
Fetch 2023 season-level defensive PPA for all SEC teams and write them into a new tab called "SEC Defensive PPA." Sort by defensive PPA ascending (best defense at the top). Highlight the Georgia row.
When you want to filter to playoff games only
The regular-season games are one story. The playoff games are another. Your editor wants both angles separately.
In the Georgia PPA sheet, add a column called "Game Type" and mark each row as "Regular Season," "SEC Championship," or "CFP" based on the week or game type field. Then in a new tab called "Playoff PPA," copy only the CFP rows.
When you want the full season efficiency story in one table
You want offensive PPA, defensive PPA, passing PPA, rushing PPA, total PPA, and opponent — all in one clean pull before you start writing.
Fetch all 2023 game-level PPA data for Georgia — total PPA, offensive PPA, defensive PPA, passing PPA, rushing PPA — for every game including bowl and playoff games. Write opponent, week, game type, and all five PPA metrics into this Google Sheet. Sort by week ascending. Add a summary row at the bottom showing season averages for each PPA metric.
The pattern: the first pull gives you the scaffold, the follow-up questions build the story. You do not have to go back to the API.
Try It
Get the 7-day free trial of SheetXAI and ask it to pull game-level PPA data for any team and year. The CollegeFootballData.com integration is included in every SheetXAI plan. For more, see how to pull Elo ratings for dynasty analysis or the CollegeFootballData.com in Google Sheets overview.