Game Rules and Scoring

Introduction to the game of Forecast Football

Tired of drafting that stud running back in the first round who comes up with a season-ending ACL tear in week two - ending your season in week two as well? Welcome to Forecast Football, a new concept in sports prediction games. In Forecast Football, there's much less luck involved, and every week - every forecast - stands on its own. The only thing you need is knowledge of the players. How many yards will Jamal Lewis rack up this week? Is Randy Moss tall enough to sky the doubleteam for 3 TDs again? Or maybe you think you know the Philadelphia Eagles better than anyone else in the world. Well, prove it. You make predictions of the box score stats (passing, rushing, receiving, touchdowns, and so on) of players you feel you know the best. Your weekly predictions are compared to everyone else's, and the better you do the higher you score:

we award 100 points for the best forecast of a player, -100 points for the worst, and 0 for being right in the middle. Then, points are averaged together to come up with your final score for the week. All forecasters must supply predictions for at least 10 players to compete.

There are two ways to play. You can play in an unrestricted league, where you're allowed predict any player in the NFL, or you can play in a superfan league. In a superfan league, you pick a team at the beginning of the season and project each player on that team every week.

Scoring Example

You think you have a good sense of how Randy Moss will perform next week, so you predict him to have 94 yards and 2 touchdowns. After he plays, we find out that he actually gets 80 yards and 1 touchdown. Touchdowns are worth 6 points, and 10 yards are worth 1 point. So your raw score is calculated by (94 predicted yards - 80 actual yards) / 10 + (2 predicted TDs - 1 actual TD) * 6, which is equal to a raw score of 7.4 (high raw scores are bad). Now, when compared to all the other Randy Moss projections, the computer finds your 7.4 was in the 75th percentile, a score of 50 points.

Now, that was a bit complicated, but all you really need to know is that the closer your forecasts are, the better your score is. If you were better than half off the other guys, your score will be positive, with 100 being the best. If you were worse... well, then your score will be negative, -100 being the worst. To find your score for the entire week, you simply average together all of your forecast scores.

League types: Unrestricted and Superfan League

An unrestricted league allows you to forecast any players you want. They can be players from your fantasy teams, your hometown favorites, all stud running backs, or any other group. The choice is yours.

A superfan league is your chance to prove that you know your team better than anyone! In a superfan league, you pick your favorite team at the beginning of the season. Every week, you project every active fantasy player on the team. You compete in your league against other superfan teams (which aren't necessarily the same team as yours), and also sitewide against all the other superfans.

Other than that, the game works the same as an unrestricted league team.

Scoring

In this game, you try to forecast players as accurately as possible. Your raw score reflects how wrong you were. The best raw score is a 0, meaning you were exactly right in your prediction, and it only goes down from there. Once the raw score is calculated, it is compared to other projections. Just like when you took the SATs, your final score is based on how well you did against everyone else. The final score is your percentile when compared to everyone else who projected a given player, stretched over -100 to 100 points. Here's an example:

To calculate a raw score, you compare your projection to the actual player's stats for that week. The score is then figured from: