How to play

The idea

Your lineup does not earn fantasy points. It plays a game. Every completion, run, reception, sack and turnover your seven produce on Sunday becomes a play in a simulated football game — first down, second down, drive, touchdown — and that game has a score. Your opponent’s seven play the same way, and the two scores decide the match.

Because the plays are real and the game is not, a week that looks quiet on a stat sheet can still be a good game, and a big yardage day that arrives in the wrong order can stall.

The season

Best single week, not cumulative. A late arrival can still post a big week 3 and qualify above someone who played both.

The bracket is fixed at 32,768 places over 15 rounds and does not shrink to fit the field — slots nobody fills are played by house entrants. Everyone who posts a lineup gets a place; nobody is guaranteed a good one, because the whole field is ranked together. Week 4 is Wildcard Weekend, a second way in for entries the qualifier did not seat.

Ordering — the part that is unusual

Every NFL game that week is laid onto one shared clock. Each is treated as kicking off at the same moment, so a play at 14:50 of the first quarter in one stadium and a play at 14:50 in another happen together. Thursday, Sunday and Monday all collapse onto the same sixty minutes.

Your plays are then run in that order, earliest first, and overtime sorts after regulation. Two plays landing on the same second are separated by a fixed hash of the game and play — deterministic, so the same week always produces the same game, and tied to nothing a lineup could be built around.

The field

A drive starts at the 50 and works down to the goal line at 0. Lower is better, exactly as “1st and 10 at the 35” means thirty-five yards from scoring.

Inside the 10 it is first and goal. A failed series sets you back but never past the 50, and the field resets at halftime.

Scoring past the end zone carries over

A play that goes further than the distance left does not waste the extra. Score from the 5 on a 20-yard run and the remaining 15 start your next drive at the 35. There is no cap: one long play can score twice, and occasionally does.

Scoring

Every card has a value, and that is what its touchdowns pay. Most cards are worth 6 per touchdown. Some are worth 7 and carry a star. The rarest are worth 8 and carry a filled star. The value is fixed when the pack is dealt — from the same seed as the cards themselves, so you can check it on the fair deal page — and it never changes. A traded card keeps its value. A play that goes further than the end zone can score twice, and pays the value twice.

A real touchdown pays a bonus on top, whether or not your game scored on that play. The player who scores it earns +3; if it was thrown, the quarterback earns +2. Start both halves of the connection and one real play pays both.

The point after is what a real touchdown converts. When a play scores in your simulated game and was a real touchdown on Sunday, the kick is good: +1 for each touchdown your game scored on that play. A simulated touchdown on a play that was not a real one has nothing to convert and pays the card’s value alone.

Put together: a card worth 7 catches a real touchdown that also scores in your game and earns 7 for the touchdown, 1 for the point after and 3 for the real one — 11. The same catch on a play where your game did not reach the end zone earns 3 and nothing else.

If the scores tie, the higher total yardage wins. Still tied, the lineup that used fewer plays wins. Still tied after that, the better qualifying seed advances.

Which plays count

• Quarterbacks — completions, incompletions, sacks, interceptions, fumbles, scrambles and designed runs.
• Runners and receivers — carries and catches, including ones that lose yards, and any fumble.
• Not counted — a receiver’s incomplete targets, kneel-downs, spikes, two-point conversion attempts, plays wiped out by a penalty, and anything a kicker or defence does.

A dropped pass costs the quarterback and not the receiver, which is worth knowing before you start both halves of a connection.

Your lineup

A pack holds 12 players drawn from a series of 192: a guaranteed 2 quarterbacks, 2 running backs, 3 receivers and 1 tight end, plus 4 more from the skill positions. How that draw works, and how to check your own, is at Provably fair.

You start 7 of them in one of two formations:

The flex takes a runner, receiver or tight end — never a second quarterback. Neither formation is better: across identical packs Spread scores higher about a third of the time, Pro a quarter, and the rest come out level. Switching keeps every player who still fits.

Players lock when their own game kicks off

Not once for the week. Until their club takes the field you can start, bench or swap them freely; from kickoff they are fixed, and everyone else on your board carries on being editable until their own game starts. A Thursday quarterback settles on Thursday and takes nobody with them. A player on a bye does not lock at all.

Trades

Winning a bracket match earns one trade with the entry you beat — give one of your twelve, take one of theirs. It is optional, it is one per win, and once confirmed it is done. A card whose club has already kicked off in the coming week cannot move in either direction, so the window closes player by player, the same way lineups lock. The qualifier and Wildcard Weekend pair nobody and earn no trade; neither does a bye or the final. House entries trade by a fixed published rule.

A traded card keeps its star. Your originally dealt pack stays published and verifiable exactly as it was; trades are recorded alongside it.

Results

Weeks are scored from official play-by-play, which the league revises for a few days afterwards. Results are provisional on Monday and final on Tuesday, and the bracket only advances once they are final.

Every game is scored under the rules in force the week it was played, so a change here never reaches back and alters a week already in the books.

The prize, and the fine print

Win the championship and take home a PS5 Pro. If no one does, the entrant who got furthest takes home an authentic Nike Elite jersey. Entry is free, there is nothing to buy, and the terms that actually bind — who may enter, how a winner is decided, what happens in a tie — are in the Official rules. This page explains how the game works; that one is the contract.