Quick Look: Onscreen QB Stats for iPhone

February 9, 2010 | By Admin In Technology |

I am sort of a stats geek when I watch sports. Don’t get me wrong, I love the action on the field, but I also love tracking what is going on beyond the action. Yeah, I am the guy with a scoresheet and stubby pencil at the baseball game. Yeah, usually my love for stats resides in baseball, a game which is just about designed for a stats geek like me. But lately, as I have gotten more involved with fantasy football, I have found my love for sports stats traversing that divide into our country’s other national sport. So, I was pretty intrigued when the folks from Onscreen Science emailed recently to tell me about their latest stats app, QB stats, which they provided me for review.

Let me just start off by talking about what you will not find here. Specifically, this is not a complete football stats app. This app is limited only to tracking your quarterback’s performance. I was a little disappointed by this limitation, since a few small tweaks could have vastly expanded the scope of this app, to include nearly all offensive stats. Still, it is designed to be limited to your quarterback, so we will look at it in that context.

The main page is…well…pretty ugly. But then again, that is almost the exact same comment I made when I reviewed OnScreen Science’s Baseball Scorecard. Ugly though the interface may have been, I was impressed by how simple it was to use, and how accessible it made some difficult stats to keep.

To get started, all you need to do is enter the team name and quarterback for each team. You can decide whether to keep stats on just one team or both quarterbacks in the game. One oddity here was that while you can go back and review previous games, you cannot select previously used names. This means that while you can keep stats for a particular game, there is no way to keep cumulative stats over the course of a season. This would have been a much better teaching and coaching tool if it would have allowed you to keep stats over multiple games.

Once you have everything set, all you need to do is record your quarterback’s actions. Tap complete for a complete pass or incomplete if it is not caught. The app even takes account of various other eventualities, like turnovers, kicks, and penalties. I did find it odd, however, that rushing yards were contained under the Other Gain button. There really should have been a separate button for rushing yards. Likewise, it seemed incongruous that you need to double tap some of the buttons. I could understand this if a single tap had some other purpose, but it does not. The double tap really felt inconsistent with the rest of the app, as well as the iPhone interface generally.

Each time the ball moves down the field, you must record how far it went. To do so, you need to enter the yard line on which the play ended. I did find it a bit annoying that you cannot just enter the number of yards advanced (or lost). Oftentimes I will know how many yards the play netted before I will actually know where the ball ended up. I will say, though, that the app covered this by including the Check Gain button, which allows you to calculate the number of yards advanced based upon the yard line you entered.

After you enter this information, the app does a fantastic job of tracking the number of passes made/completed, how many passing yards your quarterback achieved, how many touchdowns, and how many interceptions. It will also track how many yards your quarterback is averaging per attempt. Tap details, and you will find additional stats, including the quarterback rating.

My biggest criticism of this app is that it simply did not go far enough. I thought the developers did a fantastic job with what they offered, but for $3.99, I expected more. For example, they could have tracked how the number of passes/completions at different depths (ie: 0-25 yards, 26-50 yards, and so on.) Additionally, with a few simple tweaks, they could have allowed you to track nearly all of the offensive stats, such as rushing yards and receiving yards.

I thought this app had the potential to be a fantastic teaching and coaching tool. It gives you the ability to instantly show your quarterback how he is performing, even in the middle of a game or practice. However, it fell just a bit short of that potential by not keeping enough stats, and by not allowing you to record cumulative stats over the course of a season. Hopefully, the developers will continue adding features to this one. It is only a few simple tweaks away from being indispensible to football coaches and fans, but it is just not quite there yet.

OnScreen QB Stats was developed by OnScreen Science, Inc. It is available in the iTunes App Store for $3.99.

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