StatChat
The complete rule set behind every number StatChat produces: what creates each statistic, who gets credit for it, and what deliberately counts for nothing. If a figure on a stat sheet ever looks wrong, the reason is almost always on this page.
Applies to every game scored in StatChat · NFHS conventions · Updated September 2026
Read this first — every rule after it assumes this model.
A statistic is credited to a role recorded on the play: the ball carrier, the passer, the receiver, the defender, the kicker, the punter, the returner. Roles are how StatChat knows who did what, and every question about attribution comes down to which role was filled in when the play was entered.
Every stat line is keyed by the player's name, not his jersey number. Two players who wore #22 in different games keep separate lines, and a player who changed numbers mid-season keeps one.
The statistic is never thrown away. StatChat works through the options in order: a name typed on the play is used as given; otherwise the roster is searched, preferring the unit that fits the stat; otherwise any rostered player with that number; and if nothing matches, the line is labeled #22 and still counts. A jersey nobody recognizes produces a real stat line with an ugly name, which is the honest outcome.
| Label | What it means | Example |
|---|---|---|
| TEAM | Charged to the squad rather than to a player | A bad snap, and a quarterback kneel to run out the clock |
| Unknown | This happened to a player nobody wrote down | A completion where the receiver's number was not caught |
Keeping them apart matters. If you see Unknown on a stat sheet, somebody missed a number and it can be corrected. TEAM is not a gap — nothing is missing and nothing needs fixing at the keyboard.
Credited to the passer named on the play. Passing yardage comes from what was recorded for the passer, not from the play's net gain.
| Stat | Comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Attempts | Every completion, incompletion and interception | A sack is not an attempt |
| Completions | A completed pass | Still credited when the catch ended in a fumble |
| Yards | The yardage recorded for the passer | Nothing on an interception — no yardage is recorded at all |
| Long | Longest single completion | Never shown as a negative |
| Touchdowns | A completion that scored | |
| Interceptions | A pass intercepted | Counts as an attempt as well |
| Sacked | A sack, or a fumble that ended a sack | Appears on the passing line, not on the defense's |
A sack is a rushing loss on the passer's own line. The NFHS Statisticians' Manual is explicit: a player downed behind the line while intending to pass is charged with a carry and minus rushing yards, because he is not a passer until he throws and always keeps the option of running. NCAA counts it the same way. It is the NFL that keeps sack yardage off individual lines and takes it out of team passing instead.
So a quarterback who is sacked three times for 21 yards appears in the rushing table at 3 attempts for −21, even if he never carried the ball by choice. That is not an error. It is what an official worksheet and MaxPreps show for the same player, and it is why his rushing line here reconciles against theirs.
Team rushing is unaffected either way — the same attempt and the same loss, on a player's row rather than the squad's.
Credited to the receiver named on the play — a name that is optional on purpose.
| Stat | Comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Receptions | A completed pass | |
| Targets | Any pass thrown at him — complete, incomplete or intercepted | So targets and pass attempts agree |
| Yards | The yardage recorded for the receiver | |
| Long | Longest single reception | Never shown as a negative |
| Touchdowns | A reception that scored | |
| Fumbles | He fumbled | Filed under receiving when the play was a pass |
Naming the receiver is optional, because a deep ball is exactly the play where a scorer misses a number and refusing the entry would be worse than accepting it. When no receiver is named, the catch and its yardage go to an Unknown line on that team, so that passing yards still equal the sum of receiving yards. That is the check most likely to be run against a stat sheet, and it holds.
No invented player is ever created. Unknown exists only in the computed box score, never on your roster.
The receiver stays optional everywhere and the save is never refused. But when a pass is marked a touchdown with no receiver picked, the save button itself reads “Save with NO RECEIVER”, so recording an unattributed touchdown is a deliberate act rather than the default one.
A touchdown is the opposite of the play that makes the receiver optional: he is standing in the end zone holding the ball and the clock is stopped. It is also where a missing name costs most — the scoring summary, the public recap, the season leaders. Refusing the save outright would be worse, because a scorer who truly cannot identify the receiver would guess a number, and a wrong name is a lie that looks like data where Unknown is merely honest.
A catch that ends in a fumble is the one place a receiver is genuinely required: that play is filed under his number, so without it there is nothing to file.
Credited to the ball carrier. Rushing yardage is signed — a loss is a negative number and reduces the total.
| Stat | Comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Attempts | A run, or a run that ended in a fumble | A carry that ends in a fumble is one play, not two |
| Yards | The yardage recorded for the carrier | Negative on a loss |
| Long | Longest single carry | Never negative — a back whose only carry lost three yards shows 0 |
| Touchdowns | A carry that scored | |
| Fumbles | He fumbled | Filed under rushing on a run or a sack |
| TEAM | Bad snaps and clock-killing kneels | A bad snap belongs to the squad under NFHS. A kneel is a documented difference worth no yardage — see section 12 |
A strip-sack is charged as a fumble on the quarterback's rushing line, because he is the ball carrier at the moment it comes loose.
Credited to the defender named on the play.
| Stat | Comes from | Credited to |
|---|---|---|
| Tackles | Runs, passes, sacks, kickoffs, kickoff returns and punts | The named defender |
| Tackles for loss | Any of those with negative net yardage | The named defender, or TEAM if nobody was named |
| Sacks | A sack | Named defender, else TEAM |
| Interceptions | A pass intercepted | Named defender, else TEAM |
| Fumble recoveries | A fumble the offense lost | Named defender, else TEAM |
Naming the tackler is optional. When nobody is named the event is credited to a TEAM row instead of being dropped, and because every report totals the whole defense, the column adds up either way. The TEAM row holds only what no player claimed, so nothing is counted twice.
The defender you name is read as the tackler on a play from scrimmage, the cover tackler on a kick or a return, and the recoverer on a fumble or a blocked kick. That is why recovering a fumble does not also award a tackle, and neither does recovering a blocked kick — picking up a loose ball is a different act from making a tackle.
There is no solo-versus-assisted split. Entry takes one tackler per play, so every tackle is effectively solo. Splitting it would mean a second field on the fastest-moving part of the app, during a live game.
A tackle on a kick or a return is often the most notable thing a special-teams player does all night. It appears in the defensive table beside tackles from scrimmage, because it is a tackle — a separate special-teams column would split one statistic across two tables so that neither added up.
Team tackles for loss are counted from the plays themselves and need no named tackler, so that figure is a ceiling. The sum of the players' tackles for loss is a floor. They answer different questions and should not be reconciled to each other.
When a sack becomes a fumble, the sack goes to the defense's TEAM row even if a recoverer is named — the man who made the sack and the man who fell on the ball are frequently different players, and entry never asks for both. The team level is the only claim that can be made honestly.
Credited to the kicker or punter named on the play, always by roster number.
| Stat | Comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| FG attempts | Any field goal with a kicker named | Includes missed and blocked |
| FG made | A good kick | |
| FG long | Longest kick made | A longer miss never counts |
| FG blocked | A blocked field goal | Charged to the kicker |
| PAT attempted / made / blocked | Extra-point kicks | No yardage of any kind is recorded |
| Punts | Every punt | Blocked punts included |
| Punt yards and long | Unblocked punts only | |
| Punting average | Punt yards ÷ unblocked punts | The denominator excludes blocks — see below |
| Kickoffs | Every kickoff | Onside kicks included; no yardage recorded |
A punter showing 5 punts, 41.2 average has had one blocked. The average divides by unblocked punts only, so a block does not drag down a number that is meant to describe how he strikes the ball. The two counts disagree by design; nothing is wrong with the sheet.
A muffed snap or hold charges the kicker with nothing at all — no attempt and no miss, because he never got to kick it. A blocked kick does count as an attempt, because he did.
There is no "kicks blocked" statistic on the defensive side. A block appears only against the kicking team, as a blocked field goal, PAT or punt.
Naming the tackler is optional; naming the kicker is not. A kickoff, punt, field goal or extra point cannot be saved without one — the app refuses and says which name it still wants.
That is deliberate, and it is the one place special teams works differently from defense. An unnamed tackle can go to a TEAM row and the column still adds up; there is no TEAM row on special teams, so a kick with nobody named would simply be a punt that never happened. Requiring the name at the moment of entry is what keeps the kicking totals complete.
Credited to the returner, who is recorded separately from the man who tackled him.
| Stat | Comes from | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Kickoff returns, yards, long, touchdowns | A kickoff return | The default when the type is not specified |
| Punt returns, yards, long, touchdowns | A punt return | |
| Touchbacks | A kickoff that reached the end zone | Part of the kickoff count, credited to the kicker |
Kickoff and punt returns are kept apart because a 22-yard kickoff average and an 8-yard punt average are different skills in different situations; averaging them together produces a number that describes neither.
A muffed kick, or a blocked kick recovered and run back, is deliberately not counted as a return. Counting it would inflate the average that makes the statistic worth having in the first place.
| Play | Points | Credited to |
|---|---|---|
| Touchdown | 6 | The scoring team — including the defense on a return |
| Field goal | 3 | Offense |
| Extra-point kick | 1 | Offense |
| Two-point conversion | 2 | Offense |
| Safety | 2 | The defense |
| Try returned by the defense | 2 | The defense — NCAA only, see section 12 |
The scoring team travels on the play itself and is never guessed at. A safety does not change possession — the free kick that follows it does.
A touchdown and its try are one entry, the way scoring summaries are written everywhere: Roberson 4 run (Lyon kick). A missed try still appears, so the touchdown above it reads (kick failed) rather than leaving a blank — a blank reads as "no try was entered", which is a different fact entirely.
The running score beside each row is the score at that moment, not at the end of the game.
A try returned by the defense gets its own row rather than folding into the touchdown. Folding it in would be wrong three ways at once: one score shown where two happened, a parenthetical hanging off the team that did not score it, and no way to tell who got the points. The touchdown row keeps the score it was pushed with, because those two points were not on the board yet.
A first down is recorded when the play reaches the line to gain, measured against the situation before the play. Distance to go is capped going into the red zone — inside the 10 it becomes the distance to the goal line.
On a fumble the offense recovers, the runner's yardage is measured to the spot of the fumble, but the ball ends up where his team recovered it. The chains follow the ball.
Three cases. A dead-ball or post-change foul moves the ball and leaves down and distance alone; an automatic first down awards one whatever the yardage; and penalty yardage that reaches the marker on its own produces a first down.
Time of possession is built from clock entries, which are recorded after the play they belong to. A drive's time is only complete once the event that closes it has been entered — for a drive that ends in a score, that is the following kickoff, several plays later. A partial figure during a live game usually means the closing play has not been entered yet.
A game nobody timed shows nothing, not zero. Zero would state something false.
Time of possession stops at the end of regulation. Overtime is played in series rather than against a running clock, so any elapsed time entered there would be an artifact of data entry rather than a fact about the game. Overtime is also left out of possession counts, since each side is simply handed the ball.
Scoring plays in overtime carry no time stamp for the same reason: a time of day for a period with no clock states something untrue however it is labeled. Which overtime it was is still shown on the row.
Overtime is counted in series, and the round a coach would name covers two of them: OT1 is the first two series, OT2 the next two. A manual change of possession is not mistaken for the start of a new series.
A turnover is always charged to the team that lost the ball.
Nobody has possessed the ball yet, so a recovery by either side is simply a recovery. A muff is a turnover because the receiving team had the ball, however briefly. An onside kick recovered by the kicking team is not, because nobody had it to lose.
Also not turnovers: a fumble the offense recovers itself, a muff the receiving team recovers itself, a blocked kick, and — by the definition used here — a turnover on downs.
These are the answers to "why didn't that show up?" — and all of them are correct behavior rather than gaps.
| Situation | Why |
|---|---|
| Any try — PAT or two-point | Both rule books keep try plays out of the box score. No passing, rushing or receiving statistic, no yardage, and no defensive credit. |
| A muffed snap or hold on a kick | The kicker never kicked it |
| A fumble recovery counted as a tackle | Recovering a loose ball is not a tackle |
| A blocked-kick recovery counted as a tackle | Same reason |
| A tackle for loss on a fumble | Fumbles carry no net-yardage figure to test |
| A tackle for loss on a kick or return | Kicks carry no net yardage either, so a cover tackle behind the line cannot invent one |
| Kickoff yardage | Recorded, but never totaled |
| Punts inside the 20, net punting, fair catches, hang time | Not computed |
| Solo versus assisted tackles | One tackler per play |
Overtime plays from scrimmage count exactly like regulation. A run is a run and a catch is a catch. Only the try rule and the clock behave differently.
StatChat is built for high school football and follows NFHS conventions. Three places where the rule books differ are worth stating plainly.
| Rule | How StatChat handles it |
|---|---|
| Sack yardage | Charged to the individual passer as a carry and minus rushing yards, which is what NFHS prescribes and what NCAA does. Only the NFL takes it out of team passing instead. Matches an official worksheet line for line. |
| Quarterback kneel | Charged to TEAM. This is a StatChat choice, not the rule — NFHS credits the player with the loss. It is scoped so that it costs nothing: the kneel panel is for a true clock-killing kneeldown taken at the spot, worth 0 yards, and says so. Any play that actually lost ground is entered as a rush under the quarterback's number, where the yards land on his line. So the whole of the difference is one 0-yard attempt. |
| Bad snap | Charged to TEAM, which is the NFHS treatment — the manual says rushing yardage on a bad snap with no kick is credited to the team and not to an individual. Correct as written. |
| Defense returning a try | Supported, and worth two points. Under NFHS the try ends the moment the defense gains possession — no return, no score — which is how it is played in 49 states. Texas uses the NCAA book. Nothing needs to be set: under NFHS the officials kill the play, so there is no return for a scorer to record. |
| Overtime starting spot | Asked at the moment overtime begins rather than stored on the account — NFHS starts at the opponent's 10, NCAA at the 25, and NFHS overtime is itself a state adoption. The answer stays with that game, so a finished game always reads the way it was played. It sets the spot and nothing else. |
The box score is computed one way for every game. No output field records which rule book a number was computed under, so if you are sending numbers to someone who needs that distinction, say so alongside them.