Three contests, all free to enter, all played on real NFL results. Each pays its own prize; the amounts are in the table under Deadlines below and on each contest's own card.
Team pool. Pick one NFL team each week. If your team wins, you move on. If it loses, you are out. You may use each team only once all season, so spending a strong team early costs you that team later.
TD pool. Pick three players each week. If any one of them scores a rushing or receiving touchdown, you move on. If none of them does, you are out. You may use each player only once all season.
Dream Team. Draft an eight-player lineup each week: seven skill players and a kicker. It scores fantasy points from yards, touchdowns, kicks and conversions, and loses them for turnovers. The highest total each week wins a weekly prize, and the highest total across the whole season wins the grand prize. Nobody is ever eliminated, you start fresh every week, and you can join at any point in the season.
Free to enter. One entry per person per pool. Open to legal residents of Canada (excluding Quebec) and the United States (excluding Mississippi) who are 19 years of age or older. Void where prohibited. The operator of this site and their household are not eligible to win.
Everything on this page applies to both pools unless it says otherwise. This section is the part that is specific to the TD pool.
| Three players a week | You pick up to three players every week, and you survive the week if any one of them scores. You may take two or three players from the same team if you want to. There is no team rule in this pool. |
| Which touchdowns count | Only rushing and receiving touchdowns count. Defensive, special-teams and fumble-recovery touchdowns do not count for anyone. |
| The QB rule |
QBs advance on rushing or receiving TDs only. Passing TDs do not count. A quarterback who throws four touchdown passes has scored nothing in this pool. Those four count for the players who caught them. A quarterback who runs one in does score, and so does one who catches a pass on a trick play. You can pick a quarterback, and rushing quarterbacks are a real option, but you are picking them to run it in. |
| Each pick locks at its own kickoff | Late swap Your three picks have three separate deadlines. A player locks when their game kicks off, not at a single weekly deadline so if you have a Thursday player locked in, you can still change your Sunday and Monday players right up to their kickoffs. |
| Players are used up | Once a player's game has been played, that player is spent and you can never pick them again, whether they scored or not. Changing a pick before kickoff does not spend anyone. |
| A player who does not take the field | Counts as a miss If a player you picked does not play (inactive, ruled out, never sent on) your pick still stands and it scored no touchdown. It is a miss, exactly like a player who played the whole game and did not find the end zone. He is spent, and you cannot pick him again. There is no void and nothing is returned to you. |
| Check the injury report before you lock | Your risk Injury risk is part of the pick. An inactive player counts as a miss, so picking a player who is not going to play is the same as picking one who plays and does not score. We put an Out, Doubtful or Questionable badge on the player cards when the league's injury report names them, but the badge is a courtesy and not a guarantee: reports change late, and the responsibility for what you submit is yours. |
| If you pick fewer than three | The picks you did submit count as normal. One scorer still carries the week, but you have given yourself fewer chances, and none of the missing picks counts in your favour. If you submit none at all by the time the last game of the week kicks off, you are out. |
| If a game is cancelled | A TD pick on a game that is never played scored no touchdown, like any other pick that did not score, and the player is spent. This is the one place the TD pool is harder than the team pool, where a cancelled game voids instead. It is stated here because it is the rarest way to lose a pick and nobody should meet it for the first time on the night. |
Touchdowns come from the nflverse data used across this site. A pick is not settled until its game is final and the data for it has been published. A late feed is never read as a miss, it just means your week is not graded yet.
Dream Team is not a survivor contest. There is no elimination and nothing is used up. Every week you draft a new lineup from the whole league, it scores points, and the next week you start again from nothing.
| Slot | Who can fill it |
|---|---|
| QB | Quarterback |
| RB1 | Running back |
| RB2 | Running back |
| WR1 | Wide receiver |
| WR2 | Wide receiver |
| TE | Tight end |
| FLEX | Flex: a running back or a wide receiver |
| K | Kicker |
One player cannot fill two slots in the same week. Beyond that there are no restrictions at all: any player from any team, and you may pick the same player again next week, and the week after, as often as you like. Nobody is ever used up.
You do not have to fill all 8. An empty slot scores zero and the slots you did fill score normally.
| What happened | Points |
|---|---|
| Passing yards | 1 point per 20 yards (0.05 per yard) |
| Passing touchdown | 4 points |
| Rushing yards | 1 point per 10 yards (0.1 per yard) |
| Rushing touchdown | 6 points |
| Receiving yards | 1 point per 10 yards (0.1 per yard) |
| Receiving touchdown | 6 points |
| Field goal made | 0.1 per yard of the kick (a 45-yarder is 4.50) |
| Extra point made | 1 point |
| Two-point conversion | +2, to the player who scored it and to the passer |
| Interception thrown | -2 points |
| Fumble lost | -2 points |
Decimals are kept. 137 receiving yards is 13.7 points, not 13. Your lineup total is the sum of its 8 slots, to two decimal places.
Your kicker scores a tenth of a point for every yard of every field goal he makes. A 45-yarder is 4.50 points; a 26-yarder is 2.60. Six made field goals of 57, 51, 44, 56, 40 and 25 yards is 273 yards, which is 27.30 points. Each made extra point is worth 1.
A miss costs nothing. Missed and blocked field goals do not subtract, and neither does a kick that was blocked at the line. The only two questions asked of your kicker are how many yards of field goal he made and how many extra points he made.
Two of the rows above are negative, and a lineup total can go below zero. An interception thrown costs 2 points. A fumble lost costs 2 points. A fumble your player's own team recovers costs nothing at all.
A two-point conversion pays both players involved: 2 to whoever ran or caught it, and 2 to the quarterback who threw it. If you happen to hold both men, one conversion is worth 4 points to your lineup. That is the same treatment a touchdown pass already gets, where the passer is paid 4 and the receiver 6 for one play.
The list is short on purpose, and that is a feature rather than a gap. Every number that decides your week comes from the same published stat line, so you can check your own total against a box score in under a minute. Every category left out is one that would need a second source or a judgement call about a disputed stat, and neither belongs in a contest with a prize on it.
There is no weekly deadline. Every player locks 5 minutes before his own game kicks off. At that moment that slot freezes and cannot be changed again. Every other slot in your lineup stays open until each of their players' games.
So a lineup closes a piece at a time, across the whole week. A Thursday player is locked on Thursday evening while the rest of your lineup is untouched; your Sunday afternoon slots freeze just before one o'clock; and a Monday-night slot can still be changed on Monday evening, long after everything else you own has been played and scored.
The lineup page shows this directly: every filled slot counts down to its own lock, and a slot that has closed is greyed with the player still readable. Up to a slot's lock you can change it as often as you like, and changing one slot never affects another. A slot still empty when its games have gone scores zero, exactly like a slot filled with somebody who did nothing.
Entry is open all season. You can join in week 1 or in week 14. Your first lineup is for the first week that still has a game left to lock. Because slots lock one at a time, that can mean joining on a Sunday evening and drafting straight into that night's game.
A late joiner can win any weekly prize from their first week onward, on exactly the same terms as everybody else. Your season total starts from the week you join. There is no catch-up for weeks played before you entered, so joining late costs you ground in the season race and costs you nothing in the weekly one.
A slot whose player did not play scores zero. That covers a player who was inactive, one who never dressed, one on a bye, and one whose game was cancelled. The pick page badges players who are listed Out, Doubtful or Questionable so you can avoid them, but the badge is a warning and nothing more: a player listed Out can still be drafted and still scores whatever he scores, which for somebody who does not play is zero.
Every pick you submit counts. The only question asked of your week is whether one of your picks scored a rushing or receiving touchdown. If none of them did, you are out, and it does not matter why none of them did.
| He played and did not score | A miss. He is spent. |
| He was inactive, or ruled out, or never sent on | A miss, on exactly the same terms. He is spent. There is no credit for a player who was not there, and nothing is handed back to you. |
| His game was cancelled | A miss. He is spent. |
| When a player is used up | At his kickoff. The moment his game starts he is committed and you can never pick him again, whatever happens in that game or does not. Until kickoff you can still swap him out freely, and swapping spends nobody. |
Check the injury report before you lock. An inactive player counts as a miss and is used up all the same, so who is fit to play is part of the pick you are making. The injury badges on the player cards are there to help, but they follow the league's report and the league's report can change after you submit.
Void A team pick voids if the game is never played, cancelled or abandoned. You are not eliminated by a game that did not happen.
But the team is still used up. You committed that team to that week and it does not come back.
This is the one rule that differs between the two pools, so it is worth reading twice: a cancelled game spares a team pick and eliminates a TD pick that had nothing else scoring alongside it. Voids are marked in amber, and they now appear on the team side only.
The TD pool's cases are in the section above, and there are only three: one of your picks scores, none of them scores, or you submit nothing at all.
| Your team wins outright | You survive to the next week. |
| Your team loses | You are eliminated. Strict survivor: the first loss ends your run. There are no second chances and no buy-backs. |
| The game is tied | You are out The rule is that your team must win outright. In a tie, nobody did. |
| You make no pick | You are out A missed deadline counts as a loss. Set a reminder. This is the most common way people go out. Missed-pick eliminations are applied after the week's final game, so your standing shows the week as still open until then. |
Team pool. Each week's deadline is the kickoff of that week's first game. You can change your pick as often as you like up to that moment; after it, your pick is locked and cannot be changed.
TD pool. There is no single weekly deadline. Each of your three picks locks at its own player's kickoff, so a pick on a Monday-night player can be changed all the way up to Monday night, whatever your other two picks are doing.
Dream Team. No weekly deadline either. Every slot locks 5 minutes before its own player's kickoff, so your lineup closes a slot at a time across the whole week rather than all at once.
The team pool's deadline is published in advance and does not move if the schedule changes. If a game is flexed to a different day, the deadline you were given still stands. Both player contests work the other way round: a flexed game moves that player's lock with it, because the lock is the kickoff. The five minutes Dream Team allows on top are there because a scheduled kickoff is not a starting gun. Inactives are out ninety minutes early and broadcasts run long, and a slot still editable at the moment the feeds consider a game under way is a lock nobody would trust.
| Contest | Prize | Starts | Entries close |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dream Team |
$1,000.00 USD
plus a $25 Gift Card every week |
Any week | Sep 10 |
| Survivor Pool | PS5 or Xbox Series X, winner's choice | Week 1 | Sep 10 |
| TD Survivor Pool | PS5 or Xbox Series X, winner's choice | Week 1 | Sep 10 |
| A game is cancelled | Your pick is voided. You are neither eliminated nor credited with a win. The team still counts as used, because you did commit it. |
| A score is corrected later | Corrections are applied by a deliberate scoring pass, never silently on page load. An elimination already recorded is never quietly reversed or moved to a different week. |
| An entry is marked Not eligible | It is playing along but cannot win. The operator's own entry is the usual reason. Such an entry is shown in the standings so you can see exactly who is not in the running, but it is left out of the entry count, out of the still-alive count and out of every tiebreak. It can never take the prize from an eligible entrant. |
| You move province mid-season | Your eligibility is recorded as it was on the day you entered, and that is what counts. |
Every prize has a single winner. There are no splits, ever. not of the prize and not of the title. Every tiebreak below ends at something that is different for every entrant, so there is always exactly one answer.
Nothing is decided automatically. After the deciding week, the full tiebreak arithmetic (every contender, every number, in ranked order) is worked out and checked before anyone is recorded as the winner. The reasoning is then published on that pool's standings page, so you can check the result the same way we did.
| 1. Sole survivor | If at any point you are the only entrant left alive, you win, whether that happens in week 3 or week 18. The pool ends there. |
| 2. More than one entrant survives week 18 |
The prize goes to whoever was closest to the actual combined
points in the designated week 18 game.
Everyone who reaches week 18 submits a predicted combined score alongside their week 18 pick. It is a required field and it locks with your pick. You can change it as often as you like until the week 18 deadline, and not at all afterwards. Combined points means both teams' scores added together, at the final whistle, overtime included. The designated game is named before week 18 is played. Unless we say otherwise, it is the last game of week 18 by kickoff time. Closest means the smallest difference, over or under. If two entrants are exactly the same distance away, the one who signed up earlier wins. |
| 3. Everyone left is eliminated in the same week |
Wipeout
If the last remaining entrants all go out in the same week (at any
point in the season, week 18 included) the winner is decided among
that final group only, by fewest teams
spent. If that is level, the one who signed up earlier
wins.
A voided pick counts as a team spent. Nobody who was already eliminated in an earlier week comes back into contention. |
| 1. Sole survivor | Last entrant alive wins, at whatever point that happens. |
| 2. More than one entrant survives week 18, or everyone left is eliminated in the same week |
Both are settled the same way: the winner is whoever's picks scored the
most touchdowns in total across the season. If that is
level, the one who signed up earlier wins.
In a wipeout, only the entrants who went out in that final week are in contention. |
Surviving week 18 means still being alive after it. Entrants who are eliminated in week 18 have not survived it, so a week 18 wipeout is settled by rule 3 (team pool) or by season touchdown totals (TD pool), not by the score prediction.
Dream Team pays twice: a prize every week, and a grand prize at the end of the season. The two are separate. Winning weekly prizes does not use anything up, and the season prize is decided on total points however many weeks you won.
| Weekly prize |
The highest lineup total that week wins a
$25 gift card.
If two entrants tie on points, the prize goes to whoever submitted a full 8-slot lineup earliest that week. An entrant who never filled all 8 slots loses that tiebreak to one who did. |
| Season grand prize |
The highest cumulative total across the season wins
$1,000.00 USD.
If two entrants tie on total points, the prize goes to whoever won more weekly prizes. If that is level too, the one who signed up earlier wins. |
About the weekly prize. $25 gift card (winner's choice of major retailer where practical); weekly prizes may be provided by a sponsor of equal or greater value.
Weekly prizes are not automatic. After each week is scored, the full ranking is worked out and checked by a person before anyone is awarded anything, the same way the season prizes are. Every week that has been awarded is published on the pool's Winners tab, with the arithmetic that decided it, so you can check the result the same way we did. A week that has been scored but not yet awarded is listed there as pending rather than left to look like a loss.
Nothing is ever deleted. Every pick you make stays on your record whether it won or lost, and if you are eliminated you can still see the pick that did it. That is the same commitment the rest of this site runs on.
Before each week's deadline your pick is private. Once the deadline passes it appears on the standings page, so every entrant can check the result for themselves.
Dream Team lineups work the same way, with one difference: a lineup is never published on the standings page at all, only on your own pick page. Two hundred 8-player lineups a week would tell nobody anything the totals do not already say. Every lineup you have ever set, and what each slot scored, stays on your pick page for the whole season.
Before any prize is released, the winner must correctly answer a time-limited mathematical skill-testing question. This applies to every prize on this site: the season prizes in all three contests and each weekly Dream Team prize.
You must still meet the entry conditions at the time you claim: 19 or over and a legal resident of Canada (excluding Quebec) or the United States (excluding Mississippi), and the account holder of the entry that won. The operator of this site and members of their household are not eligible to win any prize, in any contest, at any time. Operator entries are marked not eligible on the standings and are excluded from every prize decision before it is taken.
Prizes are awarded as described above and are not transferable or exchangeable for cash, except that a weekly prize may be provided by a sponsor of equal or greater value. There is no cost to enter and no purchase of any kind is required or will improve your chances.
These contests are run by PicksByJackZak, an independent site. They are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or associated with the National Football League, any NFL team, or any of their trademarks.
Team names, team crests and player names appear here to identify the games and players a pick or a lineup refers to, which is the only thing they are used for. Nothing on this site is official league material, and no part of these contests is run with the league's involvement. Dream Team is a fantasy scoring contest of this site's own design; its scoring is not any league's or any other operator's, and the table above is the whole of it.
PicksByJackZak is an independent site. These pools are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or associated with the National Football League, any NFL team, or any of their trademarks.