Your first drive
- Read your target. “Take the lead” requires a higher final score. “Tie it or win it” accepts a tie. Your team is marked YOU.
- Check the situation. The board shows time left, down, distance to a first down, field position and remaining timeouts.
- Read the defense. The defensive look changes the yardage and probabilities of your calls.
- Choose a play and tempo. The selected play shows its time cost and turnover risk. Press the orange Call button to snap.
- Review the result. The field, scoreboard and play-by-play update. Keep calling until you score, lose possession or run out of time.
There is no real-time countdown while you think. Time is charged only when a call is submitted. On a keyboard, Tab and Enter operate every control; number keys 1–8 select a play when focus is outside a control, and Enter calls it.
Four downs. Ten yards. One possession.
You get up to four downs to reach the orange first-down line. Reach it and the next snap is first down, with a new target ten yards farther upfield. Inside the opponent’s ten-yard line, the target is the end zone: first-and-goal. A loss of yards makes the distance longer.
Fail to reach the line on fourth down and possession is lost. An incomplete pass spends a down. A spike also spends a down. A timeout does neither.
Field position: Own 30 means 70 yards from the opponent’s end zone. Opp 30 means 30 yards from it. The blue line marks the ball; the orange dashed line marks your first-down target.
One drive decides this game. There is no subsequent opponent possession, punt, overtime or extra-point choice. A touchdown, any field-goal attempt, an interception, a lost fumble, turnover on downs, safety or time expiration ends the drive.
Your eight calls
These are the baseline ranges against Balanced Defense at normal tempo. The playbook updates the range and risk for the actual defense and tempo. Ranges apply when the ball is successfully advanced; an incompletion or interception gains no yards.
| Call | Yards | Live seconds | Tradeoff |
|---|---|---|---|
| Inside Run | −2 to +8 | 4–7 | Low risk; always in bounds. |
| Outside Run | −4 to +12 | 5–8 | Wider range; 38% chance of reaching the sideline. |
| Short Pass | −1 to +14 | 4–7 | About 78% catch chance, 3.3% total turnover risk; catches rarely stop the clock. |
| Sideline Pass | +3 to +16 | 4–7 | About 63% catch chance; 92% of catches go out of bounds. |
| Deep Pass | +15 to +38 | 7–11 | About 38% catch chance; 9.3% total turnover risk. |
| Field Goal | 3 points if good | 5 | Distance-based accuracy. Any attempt ends the drive. |
| Spike | 0 | 1 | Stops the clock and spends a down; 2s setup if running. |
| Timeout | 0 | 0 | Stops a running clock. Limited supply; no down spent. |
The simulation first checks for an interception, then a catch, then a lost fumble on an otherwise successful ball advance. A pass can be incomplete without being intercepted. Every fumble in this simplified game is lost. Yardage is chosen uniformly within the displayed range. All probabilities are game rules, not real-world player statistics.
The four defensive looks
- Blitz: inside runs lose 2 yards across their range; outside runs gain 1. Short passes gain 1 yard and 6 percentage points of conditional catch chance, with interception risk reduced by half a point. Sideline and deep passes become riskier; deep passes also gain 4 yards across their range if caught.
- Deep Coverage: inside runs gain 3 yards across their range; outside runs gain 2. Short passes gain 1 yard and 6 catch points; sideline passes gain 2 catch points. Deep passes lose 4 yards and 14 catch points, with interception risk increased by 2.5 points.
- Loaded Box: inside runs lose 3 yards across their range; outside runs lose 1. Short passes gain 2 yards and 4 catch points; sideline passes gain 4 catch points. Deep passes gain 3 yards and 6 catch points.
- Balanced Defense: baseline values. Use score, distance and clock to make the decision.
“Catch points” change the catch check after the interception check. The displayed catch probability includes both checks. Calling a timeout keeps the same defensive look; it cannot be used to redraw the defense.
The clock and tempo
If the clock is stopped, the next play has no setup cost. After an in-bounds run or completed pass, the clock runs. Your next normal-tempo play then spends 15 seconds getting set, plus live-play time. Hurry-up reduces that setup to 6 seconds.
Hurry-up adds 1 percentage point to fumble probability and subtracts 4 points from the conditional catch chance on passes. That risk applies even if the clock was already stopped. It does not change the kick probability.
An incomplete pass or an out-of-bounds finish stops the clock after live-play time. Inside runs stay in bounds. Outside runs and all pass types can finish out of bounds, at different rates. A timeout is available only with a running clock and at least one timeout left.
A running-clock spike costs 2 seconds of setup plus 1 second of live time; with a stopped clock it costs 1 second. If setup uses all the remaining time, the snap never happens. A play snapped before zero is allowed to finish and score, even if its live time takes the clock to zero. There is no additional hidden runoff or opponent response.
Points, kicks and the final result
A touchdown is 6 points plus an automatic successful extra point: 7 points total. A field goal is 3. A safety awards 2 points to the defense and ends your drive.
Kicking distance is yards to the end zone plus 17. From Opp 30, that is a 47-yard kick. The maximum attempted distance is 65 yards. Success rates interpolate linearly between these points:
| Distance | 17 yd | 30 yd | 40 yd | 50 yd | 55 yd | 60 yd | 65 yd |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Success | 99% | 97% | 90% | 74% | 55% | 33% | 12% |
The final result is WIN if you lead, TIE if scores are level and LOSS if you trail. Target achieved is a separate check: a tie achieves only a “Tie it or win it” target. A made kick can leave you behind, or tie a game that required a lead, so read the target first.
What your strategy score means
Your strategy score measures decisions, separately from the final result. Every legal call is compared with the other available calls in both tempos before any random outcome is drawn. The best available call earns 100. Each utility point below the best costs 1.25 grade points, rounded and limited to 0–100. Your final score is the rounded average of all call grades, including timeouts and spikes.
The heuristic rewards expected progress, scoring opportunities, safer ball handling and clock stops when time is short. It penalizes a fourth-down call that cannot reach the line, an unnecessary spike, a field goal that misses the target and a setup that outlasts the clock. It is a game-specific teaching model, not a real football win-probability estimate.
See the exact utility calculation
For an advancing play, start with 48 + 2 × expected yards − 130 × turnover probability − setup seconds × clock pressure. Expected yards use the midpoint of the modified yardage range, capped at the remaining distance to goal, times the probability of a catch/advance without an interception or fumble. Clock pressure is 2 at 25 seconds or less, 0.7 at 50 or less, otherwise 0.12.
Add stopping probability × 20 at 35 seconds or less, × 9 at 65 or less, otherwise × 1. On fourth down subtract 55 if the maximum gain cannot reach the line; otherwise add catch/advance probability × 10. If the end zone is in the displayed range, add catch/advance probability × 18. With 25 seconds or less, no timeouts and an out-of-bounds rate below 40%, subtract 12. A deep pass with 30 seconds or less and more than 25 yards to goal gains 12. Hurry-up with a stopped clock loses 3.
A target-fulfilling field goal has utility 72 + 30 × kick probability. Other kicks get −45 + 10 × kick probability. A timeout gets 88 with 35 seconds or less, 72 with 60 or less, otherwise 43. A spike gets −100 on fourth down, −40 with a stopped clock, 22 if a timeout is available, 78 with no timeouts and 30 seconds or less, otherwise 30. A setup that consumes all remaining time gets −120. Probabilities in these formulas are decimals.
A strong decision can still lead to an interception. An unlikely deep catch does not retroactively make a poor decision better. Neither a win nor a loss changes the strategy score.
Daily, practice and your personal record
The Daily Challenge changes at midnight in America/New_York. Everyone gets the same initial scenario and seed. The seed, turn, call and tempo fix each outcome. Refreshing or replaying the same sequence does not reroll it.
Your current daily and practice drives save separately in localStorage. Daily records retain your first finished score, best strategy score and completed dates on this browser. Replays can improve your best score but never replace the first. Practice starts with an independent random seed and has unlimited fresh drives.
There are no accounts, global rankings or cross-device synchronization. Share Result creates plain text with your date, result, strategy score and link. Copy it, or use system sharing on a supported device.