Rules

Each weekend during the 4 playoff weeks, you will pick the winning teams to win points. The spread taken from bovada.com is taken into account. The favorite must overcome this spread to win. Each week will also offer bonus points. As the playoffs progress, the games are worth more and more points.

If your team picks are not received by game time, you will automatically be assigned the teams that are the underdogs and forfeit any bonus points.

Weekly Play

First Weekend: wild-card games
- 4 points per game: Pick the winner of each game including spread.
- 5 points***: Select which team overall will score the most points.
As a bonus, select the Superbowl winner for up to 10 points (values on home page). The higher the odds of this team winning the Superbowl, the fewer points you can win.

Second Weekend: divisional games
- 7 points per game: Pick the winner of each game including spread.
- 5 points***: Select the best* quarterback overall for the weekend.
Did your Superbowl pick from week 1 lose already? Pick a new Super Bowl winner, but you can't win as many points as those who picked this team week 1.**

Third Weekend: conference games
- 12 points per game: Pick the winner of each game including spread.
- 5 points per game: Predict the victory margin of each game within 2 points.
- 5 points***: Select the best rusher (most rushing yards) for the weekend.
Did your Superbowl pick from week 2 lose already? Pick a new Super Bowl winner, but you can't win as many points as those who picked this team week 2.**

Fourth Weekend: Super Bowl
- 20 points: Pick the winner of the game including spread.
- 10 points: Predict the victory margin of the game within 2 points.
- 5 points: Be the player or players with the best victory margin prediction.
- 5 points****: Choose the best receiver (most receiving yards - RB, WR, or TE).
- Tiebreak: Predict the total number of points that will be scored in the Superbowl.
Did your Superbowl pick from week 3 lose already? Pick a new Super Bowl winner, but you can't win as many points as those who picked this team week 3.**
For each question in week 4, you'll have the option to add or subtract those points to your overall total but ONLY if you guess correctly. An incorrect pick will always yield 0 points. If you are aiming for the high prize, add all your points. If you are aiming low, subtract all points. If you are aiming for 58, you might have to mix and match.

* Best quarterback is based on passer rating, which takes into accont completion percentage, yards per pass, TD's, and interceptions. This number will be taken from the boxscore at NFL.com. For more information, check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passer_rating.

** You lose half of the possible points rounded down. For example, if you switch to a team that would have given you 10 points, you get that team for 5 points. 5 goes down to 2, 3 goes down to 1, 1 goes down to 0. You can't pick a team for 0 points.

*** These bonus questions allow you to win points for having one of the best 3 answers (1st place = 5pts, 2nd place = 3pts, 3rd place = 2pts)

**** Pick up to 5 players. Win 1 point for each player in the top 5 REC yards for the week. For example, if you only need 3 points to reach your point total goal, try to pick 3 top 5 receivers for the week. If you are aiming for most possible points, select the 5 players you think will receive the most yards.

Winnings

Player ends with exactly 58 points — $58 from the top before other payouts
1st place = 46%
2nd place = 20%
3rd place = 15%
4th place = 10%
5th place = 5%
Lowball (lowest of all scores) = 4%

New additions and changes in recent years

2021 Covid 19 adjustment: Week 1 points per game reduced from 5 to 4 points
To account for 2 extra games in week 1, we are reducing the points per game from 5 to 4. The overall best amount of points one can win in week 1 changes from 25 to 29.

New win condition: Super Bowl Anniversary
We are introducing a new challenge this year. In honor of Super Bowl 58, end with exactly 58 points to win $58. This will allow those who aren't within reach of the top or bottom an opportunity to win in week 4. Only 1 player can win. If multiple people end with 58 points, the tie breaker question for week 4 will be used.

Week 3 bonus question: Best Rusher
Similar to the popular week 2 passer rating question, pick the best rusher of week 3 for 5pts (1st place), 3 (2nd place), or 2 (3rd place) points. The best rusher is the player with the most rushing yards of the week. The players eligible will be those listed as either RB or QB in the depth chart. All stats and depth charts will be taken from NFL.com.

Week 3 point adjustment for games
Game points for week 3 are reduced to 12 points instead of 15 points to adjust for the new bonus question.

Week 4 bonus question: Best Receiver
Pick the best receiver of week 4 for up to 5 points. You can choose up to 5 players. You receive 1 point for each receiver you picked with a top 5 performance in the Super Bowl. This way you can aim for exactly whichever amount of points you want to help some people end on 53 points. The players eligible will be those listed as either WR, RB, or TE in the depth chart. All stats and depth charts will be taken from NFL.com.

Additional Notes

Bonus Question. Pick the winner of the Super Bowl on week 1. How we transform the odds into a point value.

Lets take the example. There is a cap at 20/1 odds because a team with astronomically poor odds would ruin the distribution, so any team with 30/1 odds or 100/1 odds will be treated as a 20/1 odds team. Therefore, we will ignore the Kansas City Chiefs at 30/1 odds. They will always get a 10.

Team	Odds to win Super Bowl
Atlanta Falcons	6/1
NY Jets	20/1
New England Patriots	2/1

The most we want you to be able to win for this question this year is 10 because we don't want it to be too important on its first year. The least amount to win for a correct pick we set to 1.

Let's decide the point value for Atlanta. The worst team is 20/1 and the best team is 2/1. We also know that the max for this bonus question is 10 and the min is 1. We want to fit the 6/1 odds from the 20/1 to 2/1 scale to the 10 to 1 scale using a ratio:

(Top - Bottom ) / (Max - Min) * (this teams odds)
(10 - 1 ) / (20 - 2 ) * (6) = 3

We then add the Min (1) back to the number because it was subtracted from the numerator before.

3 + 1 = 4 and this is our number. If a team has odds which would bring this point value over 10, we set the number to 10. If a team has a decimal point value, it is rounded up at .5, so 3.5 = 4 points and 3.4 = 3 points.