Bye Board — Official Rules

Entry

• Pro-only game — leaderboard glory, no prize. Anyone can read this page and the board; playing requires MockSlate Pro. There is no cash award of any kind.
• Entrants must be 18 or older with a MockSlate account. One entry per person.
• The board opens when the 2027 selectable weeks are posted (February 2027) and locks at the officially announced schedule-release time. Change any assignment freely until then; after the lock your board rides.
• The board freezes when entries open — the selectable weeks, scoring, void rule, and tiebreak wording never change once the first entry is accepted.

How to play & scoring

• Assign each of the 32 teams a bye week, plus the numeric tiebreaker. A partial board can’t be submitted.
• The selectable weeks are only the weeks that held byes in the prior season: Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9, Week 10, Week 11, Week 13, Week 14 (from the completed 2026 slate; refreshed each season).
• +1 per team whose bye week you match exactly.
• +3 bonus per division where you get all four teams correct. Maximum score: 32 + 24 = 56.
• The whole board grades instantly on release day against the released schedule — byes are read straight from it.
• Tiebreak: how many teams will share the single most-used bye week on the 2027 schedule? The number of teams whose bye falls in whichever week holds the most byes on the released schedule (2026's answer: 6, in Week 11). Derived from the released schedule at grading — closest entry wins ties; if still tied, the earlier entry ranks first.

The void rule

If the NFL schedules any bye outside the offered weeks (rare), picks for the affected teams are voided — removed from everyone’s denominator rather than auto-failed: nobody loses to an option they weren’t offered. A division containing any voided team is ineligible for its +3 bonus, with the maximum reduced accordingly for everyone — you can’t “get all four correct” when one was unanswerable.

Strategy note

Byes aren’t random: they cluster after international trips, avoid the late season, and follow broadcast logic. Last season’s shape (heaviest week: 6 teams) is the anchor — and the division sweep is the separator: one +3 bonus outweighs three individual hits.