Create an entry and pick your teams
An entry is your seat in a league. Each week of the regular season you'll draft one NFL team that you think will blow out its opponent. (See what we did there?) If your team wins, we add their margin of victory to your entry — win by 17 and that's +17. If your team loses, we subtract the margin — lose by 6 and that's −6. A tie is a hard-earned zero. And one small rule we should mention: make your picks carefully, because you can pick each NFL team only once per season per entry.
Your worst loss is dropped
Everyone has a rough week, so your single biggest loss is dropped from your season total. Only an actual loss qualifies — pick nothing but winners and there's nothing to forgive. (That's not a penalty. That's a flex.)
Keep an eye on the clock
Your pick for the week is due by 1:00 PM Eastern on the week's main game day — usually Sunday. After that, the week is locked. Individual games lock earlier, at their own kickoff: want a Thursday-night team? Get that pick in before Thursday.
You can also draft ahead: open any future week and reserve a team now. Picks for weeks that haven't locked stay hidden from the rest of your league until lock time. And if you later want a reserved team for a different week, picking it again moves it — the original week is left without a pick, so remember to go back and re-pick it.
Whoops! You forgot to make a pick
If you forget to make a pick for a given week, you are in deep, DEEP trouble. Just kidding! But your entry is penalized: it takes the same score as the lowest-scoring pick in your league that week. If literally nobody in your league picked, everyone is assigned the biggest losing margin anywhere in the NFL that week. One silver lining — a hideous penalty week is still a loss, so it can end up as your dropped week.
Join or create a league for your entry
Much like fire, sound waves, and bunny rabbits, your entry cannot exist in a vacuum! You need to join a league or create your own. Public leagues expose your greatness to the world, while private leagues keep your greatness on the down-low behind a passcode.
Commissioners get the tools: email invitations, entry limits (per player and league-wide), a membership-lock week that closes the doors mid-season, and up to two co-commissioners to share the load. Commissioners can also correct a locked week's picks when life happens — but every correction requires a public note to the league, so there's no funny business.
The sky is the limit
Once you've created your account, you can join or create as many leagues as you want, with a separate entry in each. Some leagues allow multiple entries per player, others cap it at one — that's the commissioner's call. Every entry drafts and scores independently.
Hardcore Mode (optional)
For leagues that find plain margins too gentle, the commissioner can switch on Hardcore — a parallel scoreboard where every pick is scored against the betting line captured when you made it. Favored by 6 and win by 10? Hardcore says that's +4. Take a +7 underdog that only loses by 3 and you're up 4. There is no dropped week in Hardcore, and even missed-pick penalties are line-adjusted. Underdogs suddenly look a lot more interesting.
Tiebreakers
If entries in the same league finish the season level on points, the tie breaks in this order:
- Season total including the dropped week
- Most winning weeks
- Week-by-week points, starting with the season's final week and working backwards until someone blinks
What can you win?
Great question! Blowout Draft does not offer any prizes — just the promise of a good time playing a free game. But if you want to make it a contest for prizes and riches, you could probably talk your league mates into something, right? For instance, the winner of your league could take home that super-cool macaroni trophy you glued together in your basement. You've really got to get rid of that thing. (You will, however, earn badges — check the 🏅 badge-points board on your league's scoreboard.)