On the fantasy football side, you can input up to two fantasy leagues into the Xbox One’s NFL app. This year, the app supports three providers from the start: NFL.com, CBS and Yahoo (ESPN is available as well, but only in ESPN’s own Xbox One app). If your team is set up in the app, you can get fantasy scoring notifications just like you’d see from real NFL games.
Looks like we should have used Yahoo for fantasy. Glad to see they are adding the others besides NFL.com
But the most interesting new feature in the NFL app this year is the debut of the NFL’s “Next Gen Stats” program. The initiative, which the league began testing in the 2014 season, will put RFID chips in the shoulder pads of every NFL player this year. Those chips allow for the tracking, on every play, of an athlete’s speed, exact position on the field and distance traveled. And the NFL is making that data available to Microsoft for consumer-oriented uses such as the NFL app.
The app will pair replays with virtual overlays that allow users of the NFL app to see exactly how a play went down, from the snap to the whistle. All 22 players on the field are represented with icons indicating their position, and lines show the paths of key participants in the play. (See video below.) The replay plays in a small window in the upper right corner of the screen, and the virtual diagram of the play animates along with the video. Next Gen Stats replays will show up in the NFL app as soon as the video of the play in question hits the NFL website.