How the NFL draft game works

Every player on an NFL roster from 1980 on who has real stats behind him: at least 16 career games on record, or for an offensive lineman at least one season as a starter. Career totals come from the draft table for every player drafted since 1980, and from weekly game stats for every player since 1999. A player with neither (an undrafted player whose career ended before 1999) has no stats to rate, so he is not in the pools. Positions are grouped as QB, RB, FB, WR, TE, OL, DL, LB, CB, S and K.

• Quarterbacks, running backs, fullbacks, receivers and tight ends: career PPR fantasy points (0.04 a passing yard, 4 a passing touchdown, minus 2 an interception, 0.1 a rushing or receiving yard, 6 a touchdown, 1 a catch).
• Defensive linemen: 4 a sack, 0.6 a solo tackle, 0.3 an assist, 3 a forced fumble, 1 a pass defended, 4 an interception.
• Linebackers: 3.5 a sack, 0.8 a solo tackle, 0.4 an assist, 5 an interception, 1.5 a pass defended, 3 a forced fumble.
• Cornerbacks: 7 an interception, 2.5 a pass defended, 0.4 a solo tackle, 3 a forced fumble, 2 a sack. Safeties: 6 an interception, 2 a pass defended, 0.6 a solo tackle, 0.3 an assist, 3 a forced fumble, 3 a sack.
• Kickers: field goals made, times the square of his accuracy over 80 percent.
• Offensive linemen have no box score; they are rated in step 4.

Passes defended, forced fumbles and assists are only recorded from 1999, and kicking from 1999, which is why step 3 compares each player with his own era.

A player's production is divided by the 90th percentile of production among players at his position whose careers centre on the same decade. That puts a 1980s receiver and a 2010s receiver on the same scale even though the league passes far more now. The result is ranked within the position.

For drafted players, Pro Football Reference's weighted career approximate value (in the draft table) is ranked within the position too. The base score is 55 percent the production rank and 45 percent the value rank, or the production rank alone when there is no value on record. Offensive linemen are 50 percent value rank and 50 percent the rank of their seasons as a starter (the draft table's count, or from 2012 a season with 60 percent of snaps over at least 8 games, whichever is higher).

Honours add to the base: 0.025 for each Pro Bowl, 0.04 for each All-Pro selection and 0.08 for the Hall of Fame, capped at 0.30 (the base runs from 0 to 1). These come from the draft table, so they count for players drafted since 1980.

That score orders the players at each position. A pool then rates its own players from that order: the best at a position is 99, and the rating falls by 8 times the natural log of one plus his rank divided by how many of the position a lineup starts (1 quarterback, 1 running back, 1 fullback, 3 receivers, 1 tight end, 5 linemen, 3.5 defensive linemen, 3.5 linebackers, 2 corners, 2 safeties, 1 kicker), never below 40. So the sixth best lineman rates like the second best quarterback, and every pool, all time or one franchise, runs from 99 down with real gaps between the tiers.

The This season pool is every player on an active NFL roster in 2026, rated on the 2025 and 2026 regular seasons with 2026 games counted double. Skill players are rated on production per game, scaled down until they have played 8 games across the two seasons. Defenders are the same, times their average share of defensive snaps. Linemen are rated on their share of snaps, scaled until 12 games. Kickers are rated on field goal accuracy, scaled until 15 attempts. That form rank is 85 percent of the score and the career score 15 percent (60 and 40 for linemen, since snaps show who starts more than how well), and the pool rates that order the same way as step 5.

A team's strength is the average of its players' ratings weighted by how much each slot matters. A slot nobody could fill plays at 40. The weights:

Every team plays 17 weeks on a round robin schedule (a bye when the number of teams is odd). In each game, both scores are drawn around 22 points. Each point of strength difference moves the stronger team's expected score up 1 point and the other's down 1, home field moves them 0.75 each way, and each score then varies by a standard deviation of 9 points. A tie goes to overtime: the winner adds 3 points, and the stronger team is more likely to be that winner. The top four teams play single-game semifinals and a final (the top two play the final in a league of two or three).

The box scores are simulated, not real: the points become field goals and touchdowns, spread among the players by their slots and ratings. The MVP is the best simulated season line, scaled up by how often his team won. The whole season comes from the league code, so it is the same for everyone in the league and on the results page.

All player data comes from nflverse, the free public NFL data project, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license: its roster files from 1980, the draft table (career totals, approximate value, Pro Bowls, All-Pros and the Hall of Fame, originally from Pro Football Reference), weekly player stats from 1999 and snap counts from 2012. Player photos are the headshots in nflverse's player table; where there is none, the card shows a plain silhouette. Clubs are listed by today's franchise, so the Houston Oilers count as the Titans.