The 2026 NFL Season, Graded Before a Down Is Played
10 September 2026
Play it before they do
The season opened in Seattle on Wednesday night and this pack was built for exactly that moment. Every one of the 32 teams is rated for 2026 from a published preseason forecast and last season's scoring, so you can run the year on your table while the real one unfolds and see where the two part company. When the real season is in, the pack becomes the souvenir and the gap is the story.
There are two games in the box, and they are meant to be used together.
Game one: Move the Chains: Sunday
This is new. It is the pro football version of the possession game that went into Collegiate Gridiron last month, and this is its first release under its own name.
There is no board, no field and no yardage. Each team carries two letter grades, one for offence and one for defence. Before kick-off you cross them on the Match-Up Chart and get a Drive Grade, and that grade is your column on the Possession Chart for the afternoon. Twelve drives a side, alternating, one roll of a ten-sided die each: touchdown, field goal, long field goal, punt or turnover. Kicks are live and can be missed. Turnovers can come back the other way for six. A turnover also hands the other side a short field, so their next drive plays one grade better, and the whole table knows the number they need has just dropped by one.
Played bare a game takes ten minutes. Played with the seven narrative tables it takes twenty-five, and you finish with a drive log you can read back like a match report: which drive ended in a pick six, which kick sailed wide into the wind, which fourth-and-inches sneak fell forward.
The rulebook carries three era Possession Charts, because the NFL scored 17 a side in 1977 and 25 in 2020 and one chart cannot be honest about both. For 2026 you only need the high-scoring one. The others are there because the full library, every season from 1950 to 2025 and the AFL 1960 to 1969, is graded on the same scale and is on its way to The Complete NFL History as a free update.
The app
The box includes an offline browser app for the drive game. One file, nothing to install. Pick your two teams, it works out the grades, rolls an animated d10 on every possession, tells you the number you need before the die lands, applies the short field and the fourth-quarter bonuses on its own, runs all seven narrative tables and fills the drive log as you go. Tick two-point conversions at set-up and every touchdown becomes a choice. Overtime is added one drive at a time.
If you would rather play with a pencil, open the Game Sheet tab and print one A4 page with both teams, their grades, the number each needs, and a drive log with the teams already written into every row. Set it up on the screen, play it on the table.
Game two: 3rd and Long
The quick engine that already runs every NFL season from 1950 to 2025. Two d100, one roll per team per game, and the modifiers are pre-calculated for all 272 games of the 2026 schedule, from the Wednesday night opener to the last Sunday in January. Roll, add, look up the score, write it in. A full week of the league in a quarter of an hour, a whole season in a few evenings, then seed the playoffs from your own standings and play through to Super Bowl LXI.
It comes with a 19-page fill-in schedule: every game with its day, date and kick-off time, a score box per game, and blank playoff rounds from the Wild Card to the Super Bowl. The playsheet, scoring charts and modifier lookup ship alongside, with a black and white edition of the lookup for printers without colour.
Use them together
Play the 2026 season on 3rd and Long for pace. When a game matters, the divisional decider, the wild card weekend, the Super Bowl, switch to Move the Chains and play it drive by drive. Same teams, same ratings, one box.
Already own The Complete NFL History? The full Move the Chains: Sunday library is coming to that bundle free. This pack is the 2026 season only.