Slot Draft — Official Rules

How Slot Draft works

1. Draft the windows, not the games. With up to 10 players, you take turns (snake order) claiming the NFL’s marquee broadcast slots — Sunday and Monday nights, the three Thanksgiving games, the Kickoff opener, Black Friday. Each window is claimed by one player only. You draft 4 in all.
2. You’re betting on shootouts. The matchups aren’t known yet, and you’re not after the best games — you’re after the highest-scoring ones. Your points are the combined final score, so a 38–35 track meet beats a 13–10 defensive battle every time. The skill is predicting which slots the NFL fills with offense: the late Thanksgiving window averages 55+ combined points, while some Sunday nights barely clear 38 — every window’s card carries its history. Draft the windows you think will light up the scoreboard.
3. Release day fills your card. When the real schedule drops, every window you drafted fills with whatever game the NFL actually put there — and that game is yours all season, every point both teams score included.
4. Points = combined final score. Add up both teams in each of your four games — that’s it, no bonuses of any kind. Highest four-window total across every league in the country tops the glory board. No prizes — bragging rights only.

Entry

• Pro-only game — glory, no prize. Anyone can read this page; entering and playing require an active MockSlate Pro membership. There is no cash prize, public or private — leaderboard bragging rights only. Pro never affects prize eligibility or odds on MockSlate’s free prize games.
• Entrants must be 18 or older with a MockSlate account, US only at launch. Void where prohibited.
• Leagues open in February and keep filling until the week of the official schedule release. Your entry counts once per person, however many leagues you play.
• Your entry locks the moment your league drafts — once you’ve drafted your 4 windows, your roster is final. The schedule filling in later never changes what you drafted.

The window board

• The draft pool is the 40 guaranteed national broadcast windows: 18 Sunday Night (one per week, Weeks 1–18), 17 Monday Night (Weeks 1–17), the Kickoff opener, all three Thanksgiving games, and Black Friday.
• Deliberately excluded: Thursday Night (count varies year to year), Christmas (game count follows the weekday), Saturday and international windows (structure not guaranteed early). Every drafted window is certain to exist and produce a real game — no dead picks.

How to play

• Leagues of 10, snake draft, 4 rounds — 40 picks, so the board drafts exactly dry: every window taken, none wasted.
• Rolling leagues: one public league accepts signups at a time; the moment it fills to 10 it locks and the next opens. Each locked league schedules its own draft without stalling new signups. Pro users may also create private friend leagues (size 10; every member needs Pro).
• You draft a window, not a game — “Week 12 Sunday Night,” not a matchup. When the schedule releases, your window fills with the actual game the NFL put there, and it’s yours for the season.
• You own the window, not the matchup. If a game is flexed out of your window during the season, you own whatever gets flexed in. (The deliberate inverse of Schedule Release Draft, where you own the matchup wherever it moves.)
• Stacking is legal: spending two picks on the same week (say, Week 12 Sunday and Monday night) is a coverage-versus-concentration choice, not a penalty.

The draft & autopick

• Drafts are a snake order with a 30-second pick clock. Empty seats in an under-filled league are filled automatically.
• Can’t make the draft live? Set an optional personal draft board beforehand — your own ranked list of windows.
• If your pick clock runs out, we autodraft for you in this order: (1) the highest still-available window on your personal board; (2) if you have no board or every window on it is taken, the default ranking (best available by historical scoring). Empty (unclaimed) seats always use the default ranking.

Scoring — sum of your four windows

• Each of your 4 windows scores its game’s combined final score — both teams’ points added together, nothing else. Your season total is simply the sum of all 4. No best-week rule, no weekly comparison — every slot counts.
• No bonuses. There is no extra credit for yardage, defensive touchdowns, or overtime — points are points, so a 38–35 track meet outscores a 13–10 defensive battle, full stop.
• Leaderboards show a “Games Left” count — how many of each player’s windows haven’t been played yet — so standings are visibly not final until the leaders’ games are in.

Winner & tiebreakers

• Highest season total wins each league. League winners — public and private friend leagues alike — rank on the national Slot Draft leaderboard for season-long bragging rights. No cash prize anywhere in this game.
• Tiebreaker: the earliest-submitted entry wins the tie. Sponsor: MockSlate (finalized in the attorney-reviewed rules).
• MockSlate hosts no buy-ins, pots, or payouts of any kind for friend leagues.