Off the Map — Official Rules
Rules version: games-off-the-map-2026.v1-2026-07-16
Off the Map — Contest Official Rules — effective July 16, 2026
Sponsor: Cody Blaze Enterprises LLC d/b/a MockSlate. MockSlate is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or associated with the National Football League, any NFL team, or any player. All league and team names are used for descriptive reference only.
Eligibility: Open to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and D.C. who are 18 years of age or older at time of entry. Employees, officers, and directors of Sponsor, and their immediate family members (spouse, parent, child, sibling) and household members, are not eligible. Void where prohibited or restricted by law.
Entry Period: Join during any week of the 2026 season; each week's pick locks Tuesday night per the published weekly schedule ("Entry Deadline" per week). Sponsor's server clock is the official timekeeper.
Judging and Tiebreakers: Entries scored per the published Scoring Rubric (below). In the event of a tie: the tiebreakers published in the Complete Rules below apply; if still tied, the earliest-submitted entry wins. Sponsor's scoring decisions are final and binding. The Scoring Rubric and Tiebreakers are frozen at the Entry Deadline and will not be changed thereafter.
General Conditions: Sponsor reserves the right to cancel, suspend, or modify the Contest if fraud, technical failure, or any other factor beyond Sponsor's reasonable control impairs the integrity of the Contest, as determined by Sponsor in its sole discretion. Sponsor may disqualify any entrant it believes has tampered with entry, scoring, or the Service.
Privacy: Information submitted is handled per the MockSlate Privacy Policy at mockslate.com/privacy.
Disputes and Governing Law: All disputes are governed by these Rules and the MockSlate Terms of Service (including the arbitration and class-waiver provisions), and by the laws of the State of Florida without regard to conflict-of-law principles.
Entry
- Pro-only game — leaderboard glory, no prize. Anyone can read this page, the weekly board, and the results; 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.
- Join any week — your entry is created with your first pick. Weeks before you joined simply score 0, like any missed week. There is no elimination: this is a drip game, not survivor.
The weekly cycle & the lock
- Each week during the 2026 season, pick one game from that week’s Sunday 1:00 ET window (the only window in play — a clean pool).
- Picks lock at 11:59 PM ET on the Tuesday before the slate. Picks lock before the week's coverage maps are published.
- Change your pick freely until the lock; after it, the week rides. The lock is enforced by the server clock, not the page.
Scoring
- +3 — your pick is the game covering the smallest share of US land area (not population) on that week’s published coverage map.
- +1 — your pick is the second smallest only; third and below score nothing. Scoring is either/or, never additive: the smallest game scores +3, not +4.
- Season leaderboard is the running total across all weeks; missed weeks score 0.
The judging rule (published for transparency)
Weekly results are judged from the coverage map as published by 506sports — credited here as the source. Determination is by inspection, with a published tiebreak: if visually close, the game shown in fewer states wins “smallest.” A computed land-area version is a planned upgrade. Their maps are their copyrighted graphics — we link to them and never reproduce them; every illustration on MockSlate is our own original, stylized graphic.
Strategy note
The smallest map is usually two distant, small-market fanbases with nothing national at stake — but protections, doubleheader structure, and which network holds the doubleheader that week all move the blob. The coverage-map literacy this game teaches is exactly what the weekly maps reward.
MockSlate's prize games are free-to-enter skill contests — no purchase necessary. Pro-exclusive games are prize-free and carry no cash award. Not affiliated with the NFL or any team.