How DraftIcon works
Ten packs, six cards each, forty-five seconds a pick. Seven of your ten players score real NFL points for the week, you get two trades, and everything resets on Tuesday. This page is the whole ruleset in order, and at the end the rules of a normal fantasy league for comparison.
Pack opens, you pick, next pack.
Real footage. Everything described below is what you are watching here.
Packs open on Tuesday and stay open until kick-off. You draft ten players, one from each pack, and set seven of them as your starters. The real NFL weekend happens and their real fantasy points become your score. During the week you may trade twice, but a player locks the moment his own game starts. On Tuesday the roster expires and everyone begins again from nothing.
That is the entire game. There is no budget, no season-long roster, no waiver wire and nothing to pay for.
packs in a draft, one pick from each
real NFL players in every pack
on the clock for each pick
starters whose points count for the week
The draft
You are not shown a list of every NFL player. A pack of six opens, a clock starts, and you take one of the six. Then the next pack. Ten packs, ten picks, about fifteen minutes in total.
Every card carries what you need to decide without research: the player, his position, his projection for this week, and a rating for the defence he is about to face. Green is an easy matchup, red is a defence that has been hard on his position. You are never expected to have read anything beforehand.
Cards come in tiers. An Icon is a top-of-the-league player and turns up rarely; below that are Starters and then Depth. Some packs are gold or silver, which changes what is inside. A card can also be marked as hot, meaning the player is in form right now, and the current ones are listed on the players trending up page.
Your team
Ten players, of which seven start. The starting seven have fixed positions, so the draft is not only about taking the best card on offer but about filling the shape.
The remaining three sit on the bench. They score nothing directly, and they are there so a trade has somewhere to land and an injury does not end your week. There is no formation to choose and no lineup to set after the draft: the seven you pick are the seven who play.
Scoring
We do not invent a scoring system. Your players score the real NFL fantasy points they scored that week, taken from the Sleeper API, and your team score is the total of your seven starters. A touchdown is worth what a touchdown is worth everywhere else.
That matters more than it sounds. It means the number on your screen is one anybody can check, it means the projection on the card is comparable with what you read elsewhere, and it means we have no lever to make the game feel better than it is.
During the week
Two trades
You get two trades in a week. A trade opens a small pack, you take one card from it and give one of yours back. It is the only way the roster changes after the draft, and using neither is a perfectly normal week.
A player locks at his own kick-off
There is no single weekly deadline. Each player is locked the moment his game starts and cannot be traded after that, whatever else happens. A Thursday player is gone by Thursday evening; a Monday player stays available all weekend. The same rule on the big platforms is explained on when a fantasy lineup locks.
Nobody can take a player from you
Cards are not exclusive. Two managers can both hold the same player, because you each open your own packs. This is the rule that makes a draft purist wince, and it is deliberate: with no scarcity there is no waiver wire to lose and no commissioner to arbitrate.
Players on a bye are simply absent
If a player's team is not playing this week, his card is not in the packs at all. The classic beginner mistake cannot be made here, because the game will not offer you the chance.
How a week ends
When the last game is over, your score is final and you are placed in three rankings at once: against the friends you have added, against everyone in your country, and against everyone in the world. You do not have to join anything for that to happen.
Then it is over. The roster expires, the packs reset, and next week starts from nothing for everybody. A bad week costs you a week. So does a good one, which is the honest half of the same rule.
Rivals are the one thing that carries: star up to three people and the record between you keeps running, win by win. That is covered on the rivalry page.
The season underneath the weeks
Every week resets, but the weeks are not forgotten. Each one you play counts towards a season table, and the table is the reason to keep turning up after a bad Sunday.
You are placed in a division of eight. The order is decided by the average of your three best weeks, not by your total, which has two effects worth knowing. One disaster does not sink your season, and nobody can coast on a single lucky Sunday either. If two people are level, the better single week wins it.
Divisions fill by country first, so the eight people above and below you are usually in the same place as you. When a new one is needed it gets the name of a river and a three-letter code. Your division is yours to see; you are not shown the members of anybody else’s.
Two rules keep it honest. Miss three completed weeks in a row and your place is released for somebody who is playing, and if you come back you are put in a different division rather than the one you left. Separately, a week that beats the worldwide average is counted as a world win and shown as its own column. It earns you something, but it does not move the table: the table is the three best weeks and nothing else.
What needs an account and what does not
| Mode | What it is | Account? |
|---|---|---|
| Practice draft | A full draft against the coach bot, any time, as often as you like. | None |
| Duel on one phone | One to four people pass a single device around and draft in turn. | None |
| Playing the real week | Your team is scored and ranked against everybody else playing. | An e-mail address |
| Friends and rivals | Adding people, keeping a record against them. | An e-mail address |
The account exists because a score has to survive until game day and be comparable with other people's. There is no password to invent, you get a sign-in link, and there is no payment method to add because there is nothing to buy. The modes in detail are on ways to play.
How a normal fantasy league works
Almost every rule above exists because this game lasts a week. A season-long league lasts eighteen, and that single difference explains the rest of fantasy football. If you are new to it, the six words that carry the whole genre are on fantasy football for beginners.
| A season-long league | DraftIcon | |
|---|---|---|
| The draft | Once, in August, with everybody present | Every week, on your own time, from packs |
| Ownership | Exclusive: a player belongs to one manager | Shared: everybody opens their own cards |
| Roster changes | Waiver claims and trades, all season | Two trades, then the week is over |
| The deadline | Per player, at his own kick-off | The same, per player |
| If it goes wrong | Four more months of it | Tuesday |
| To start | An account, a league and nine other people | Nothing, for the practice draft |
The parts of a season-long league that people ask about most have pages of their own: how many managers you actually need, playing one against one, joining a league of strangers, and arriving after the draft has happened.
The recurring complaints have pages too, because they are the reason this game exists: how much time it really takes, injuries deciding the season, a season that is over in October and why it stops being fun. If the money is the part you want out of, that is playing without gambling, and the format in between is weekly redraft.
None of that is an argument that the league is bad. A good league with friends is the better game and nothing here replaces it. This is for the weeks when you do not have one.
Quick answers
How many players do I draft?
Ten, one from each of ten packs. Seven of them start and score: a quarterback, two running backs, three receivers and a tight end. The other three are your bench.
How long does a draft take?
About fifteen minutes. Six cards per pack, forty-five seconds per pick, ten picks.
How is the score calculated?
It is not calculated by us. Your starters score their real NFL fantasy points for that week, read from the Sleeper API, and your total is the sum of the seven.
Can two people have the same player?
Yes. Cards are not exclusive, because everybody opens their own packs. That is the biggest difference from a draft league and it is the reason there is no waiver wire.
Can I change my team after the draft?
Twice a week, through a trade: a small pack opens, you take a card and give one back. A player who has already kicked off cannot be traded.
When does a player lock?
At his own kick-off, not at a single weekly deadline. A Thursday player locks on Thursday, a Monday player stays tradeable all weekend.
What happens to my team next week?
It expires. Everyone starts from nothing again on Tuesday, which is why a bad week costs you a week and nothing more.
Is there a season, or only weeks?
Both. Each week stands alone, and every week you play also counts towards a season table. You sit in a division of eight, ranked by the average of your three best weeks, so one bad Sunday does not end anything.
Do I need an account?
Not for the practice draft against the coach bot or the duel on one phone. You need one to be scored and ranked, and it costs an e-mail address with no password to invent.
What does it cost?
Nothing. There is no shop, no premium tier and no paid packs, so nobody can spend their way to a better team.
What is a hot card?
A card marked because the player is in form right now. Which players those are changes every week and the current list is on the players trending up page.
Fifteen minutes. One week.
The practice draft asks for nothing at all, not even an e-mail address.