Game Simulator Hub Help and FAQs

• Getting started
• Accounts and sign-in
• Single Game
• Game Day (Watch Mode)
• Coach Mode
• Full Season
• Week-by-Week season
• My League
• Custom Team Builder
• Fantasy scoring formats
• Saved sims
• FAQ

Getting started

Everything lives at /Simulation. Three tabs across the top of the hub:

• Single Game. One matchup, three ways to play it.
• Full Season. All 272 regular-season games plus 13 playoff games, run instantly or week by week.
• My League. A custom 32-team league built on top of your saved Custom Teams. Sign-in required.

You can run a single game or a full season as a guest. You need an account to save sims, build custom teams, or run a league.

Accounts and sign-in

Register or sign in from the link at the top right of any page.

• /Account/Register creates an account. Email plus password.
• /Account/ForgotPassword resets the password if you have lost it.

Account-only features:

• Save single-game and batch sim results (up to 10 stored at any time).
• Save full-season sim results (up to 5 stored at any time).
• Build up to 5 Custom Teams.
• Run up to 5 custom Leagues.

Without an account you can still run any sim and view the result. The result is held in memory for two hours, after which it is cleared. Sign in to keep anything long term.

Single Game

On the Single Game tab, pick a home team and an away team. Each team has its own Stat Year dropdown next to it. The Stat Year is the season the engine reads ratings and rosters from. You can mix years freely, so the 2024 Eagles can play the 2007 Eagles if that is the matchup you want.

Once both teams are picked, three launch buttons appear.

Simulate Game. Runs the matchup instantly. Drops you on the full result page. Set the Games count (1 to 10) before clicking if you want a batch. Batch mode runs the same matchup multiple times and gives you average box scores, win counts for each side, and the score swing range. This is the go-to mode for fantasy projection work.

Game Day. Same matchup, watched live. Animated field, narrative card per play, live scoreboard, drive chart. Covered in detail in the next section.

Coach Game. Same matchup, you call every play. Covered in the Coach Mode section further down.

The result page has three tabs. Gamecast for the recap (score, leaders, team stats, full play-by-play). Drive Chart for a colour-coded view of every drive. Box Score for the full player stat grid, including a fantasy points column scored against whichever scoring rule you have selected.

Game Day (Watch Mode)

Same matchup, but the game plays out live with animations and a running narrative card. The page has four blocks stacked top to bottom.

1. Live scoreboard. Both team chips with logos, the score, the clock, down and distance, possession glow, timeout dots.
2. Field strip. Small overhead diagram showing line of scrimmage, the first-down marker, and the direction the offence is moving.
3. Narrative card. Featured player headshot, one-line description of what just happened, play type and yardage. A Continue chip on the right advances manually.
4. Drive chart. Collapsible reveal at the bottom. Click open to see every drive of the game so far on a colour-coded timeline.

Controls sit on a row below the narrative card. From left to right:

• Pause / Play.
• Speed slider. 1x is reading speed. 4x flies through. Numbers in between blend the two.
• Skip. Jumps to the next big event or to the final score.
• Stats. Opens the live team-stats panel.

When the game ends, the final score sits on the scoreboard and the result tabs from the instant sim become available below.

Coach Mode

You take one sideline. The engine takes the other. Every decision your side faces, you make. The engine animates every snap and tells you what happened on the narrative card.

Coin toss. First screen of every game. Pick Heads or Tails. If you win, the next screen asks whether you want to receive in the first half or defer to the second. If you lose, the CPU will usually defer to the second half.

Kickoff style. Before any kickoff (game start, after a score), pick how you want to kick.

• Normal. Standard deep kick. About a 20% touchback rate. Most plays end with the returner caught between his 20 and 30.
• Squib. Short kick that bounces 20 to 40 yards downfield. Used to keep the ball out of a dangerous returner’s hands.
• Onside. Short kick, recovery rate around 10 to 12 percent. Use when you are trailing late and need the ball back.

The offensive play picker. The biggest screen in Coach Mode. Formation pills along the top let you switch between the nine available formations.

• Shotgun (1 RB / 1 TE / 3 WR)
• Shotgun Heavy (2 TE / 2 WR)
• I-Form (2 RB / 1 TE / 2 WR)
• I-Form Heavy (2 RB / 2 TE / 1 WR)
• Pistol
• Singleback
• Trips Right
• Empty (5 receivers, no back)
• Goal Line (jumbo, short yardage and goal-area)

Below the pills are the play cards. Each card shows the play name, the chalkboard with routes, and the featured target or ball carrier with their headshot. Tap a card to stage the play. Tap a player dot inside the card to lock that player as your primary target on a pass or your ball carrier on a run. A locked player gets a red ring around their headshot in the chip. If you do not lock anyone, the engine picks the read based on the coverage that develops after the snap.

Ask the OC. Click the big orange bar at the top of the picker. The recommender reads the down, the distance, the field position, the score, the clock, the defensive personnel package on this snap, and the last two plays you have called. It then suggests a play that fits. The pill flips to the right formation, the card flashes, and the play stages. You can take it or override.

What the recommender weights:

• Situation. Goal line and short yardage favour heavy formations. Two-minute drill while trailing favours Empty or Trips.
• Defensive personnel. Heavy fronts (Base, Goal Line) push toward pass calls. Light fronts (Nickel, Dime) push toward run calls.
• Recent history. The recommender will not suggest a play you have called in the last two snaps.
• Active formation. Soft preference for staying inside the formation you are currently looking at, unless the situation strongly says otherwise.

Special teams in the offensive picker. Four buttons sit below the play cards.

• Punt. Send the punt team out.
• Field Goal. Attempt a FG from the current spot. The estimated distance shows on the button.
• Kneel. QB kneel. Burns clock.
• Spike. QB spike. Stops the clock immediately.

The defensive call picker. Same idea as offence. Formation pills (Base, Nickel, Dime, Goal Line) along the top. Cards underneath for the coverages and fronts that fit each personnel package. Chip colour tells you the type at a glance: blue for zone, orange for man, red for blitz, grey for goal line.

To send an extra rusher, tap any defender whose ring is dashed and orange. That player becomes the blitzer. The hint shows on the first defensive snap of every game. After that the engine handles standard rushers automatically.

Ask the DC. Same as Ask the OC, in reverse. Reads the situation and the offensive personnel package, suggests a coverage and front. Recent history avoids back-to-back repeats.

4th down. The regular picker is replaced by a 5-card grid.

• Punt. Send it.
• Field Goal. Distance shown on the card.
• Go For It. Run your offence on 4th down. Drops you back in the standard play picker for one snap.
• Fake Punt. Punt formation, but the punter pops a pass to a gunner running deep.
• Fake FG. FG formation, holder pops up and throws.

Each card draws the actual play that will fire, so you can see what is coming before you commit.

PAT after a touchdown. Two tiles. Kick the 1-point extra point, or go for the 2-point conversion. A 2-point call drops you back in the offensive play picker for one snap from the 2-yard line.

Penalty: Accept or Decline. When a flag is on the field after a play resolves, you get an Accept / Decline card pair.

• Header chips show ACCEPT (orange) and DECLINE (grey).
• The card the engine recommends has an "AI SUGGESTS" badge in the corner.
• Each card shows the consequence of that choice (for example: "5 yards, automatic first down" vs. "original play stands, minus one yard").

Tap the card you want.

Timeouts. Three per half, displayed as orange dots in the scoreboard. Tap the Call Timeout button on the coach panel to spend one. The number in the chip is what you have left.

Sim Rest of Game. When you have had enough, hit this button on the coach panel. The engine plays out the rest of the game, keeping everything you have done so far. Drops you on the result page.

Coach Mode does not survive a browser refresh or a closed tab. Coach sessions live in server memory for the duration of the visit. If you have to step away, keep the tab open.

Full Season

From the hub, click the Full Season tab. The setup form has four fields.

• Season. The year that decides the schedule (2013 onwards).
• Stat Year. The year that decides rosters and ratings. Usually matches the Season but does not have to. Set Season 2024 and Stat Year 2018 if you want to run the 2024 schedule with 2018 rosters.
• Randomness. Slider from 1 to 100. At 1 the better-graded team almost always wins. At 100 every game leans toward a coin flip. Default is 50.
• Mode. Instant (run all 285 games in one click) or Week-by-Week (the engine builds the schedule but waits for you to advance).

Hit Simulate Season. Instant mode takes between 30 and 60 seconds for all 272 regular-season games plus 13 playoff games.

The result page has five tabs.

• Standings. Grouped by conference and division. Real NFL tiebreaker rules applied (head-to-head, division win percentage, common opponent percentage, conference win percentage, strength of victory, strength of schedule, points for, points against). Playoff seeds in the right column.
• Scores. Week-by-week grid of every game.
• Playoffs. The bracket. Wildcard, divisional, championships, Super Bowl. Real NFL playoff seeding rules (top division winner, then wild cards by record).
• Leaders. Pass yards, rush yards, receiving yards, sacks, picks, fantasy points.
• Team Detail. Click any team in the standings to drop into their roster with every player’s stats for the season.

Week-by-Week season

Same setup form as Full Season, but pick Week-by-Week for the Mode. The engine generates the schedule and stops. Nothing is simulated yet.

You land on the season result page with Week 1 sitting there, every game unplayed. From here you have two buttons per week.

• Sim Week. Flies through every game in the current week. Takes a couple of seconds. Advances the slate to the next week.
• Coach. One per matchup. Drops you into Coach Mode for that single game. You take one side, the engine takes the other.

You can also click Sim Rest of Season at any point. Useful when you have ridden your team to the playoffs and want the rest to play out.

When a coached game ends, the result folds back into the standings and you advance to the next week. Standings, leaders, and tiebreakers all update.

One detail: in week-by-week mode the playoffs auto-resolve by default. If you want to coach a playoff game, click the Coach button on that specific matchup once the bracket is set.

My League

My League is where Custom Teams meet the season sim. A league is a copy of the full 32-team NFL grid where any slot can be replaced with one of your custom rosters.

To set one up:

1. Sign in.
2. Build at least one Custom Team (see the next section).
3. Go to /League. Click Create league.
4. Give the league a name. Pick the base Season and Stat Year.
5. In the editor, click any of the 32 slots in the grid. Pick a Custom Team to swap in. Swap one team, swap five, swap all 32.
6. To put a slot back to the original NFL team, click Revert on that slot.
7. Save the league.
8. Run a Season Sim using that league. Same week-by-week or instant options as the regular season sim.

Up to 5 leagues per account. Each league keeps its own swap configuration. Leagues do not store season results in themselves. Each season sim run against a league creates an independent saved sim.

Custom Team Builder

The Custom Team Builder is at /CustomTeam/Index. Sign-in required. Click Create team.

Three ways to start:

• Blank slate. Empty depth chart, fill it from scratch.
• Copy from an NFL team. Load any existing roster, then swap players in and out.
• Clone an existing custom team. Start with one of yours and tweak.

The player pool runs the full league for any year between 2013 and today. Search by name (partial match works), position, or overall grade. Tap a result to add the player. Tap an existing player on your roster to remove or swap.

Position requirements: the engine needs enough players to field every position group. As a rule of thumb you need at least 1 QB, 2 RBs, 3 WRs, 1 TE, 5 OL, plus DL, LBs, and DBs on the defensive side. The builder warns you if you are short anywhere.

Up to 5 custom teams per account. To rename a team, edit it from the Custom Team index page. To delete one, hit the delete button on the team card.

Once saved, a custom team is available in the regular Sim Hub team pickers alongside the real NFL franchises and inside the League editor as a swap target.

Fantasy scoring formats

Every box score, every leaderboard, every team detail page in the hub has a fantasy points column. Pick the format from the dropdown at the top of any sim page. The column re-scores live so you can read the same projection through any league’s exact rules.

Supported formats and the rule differences:

• Standard. 4-pt pass TD, −2 INT, 1 pt per 25 pass yards. 6-pt rush/rec TD, −2 fumble, 1 pt per 10 yards rushing or receiving. No PPR.
• Half-PPR. Same as Standard, but 0.5 points per reception.
• Full PPR. Same as Standard, but 1 point per reception.
• ESPN. Same as Standard (no PPR by default in ESPN).
• Yahoo. Same as Standard but interceptions thrown cost −1 instead of −2.
• Sleeper. Full PPR by default.
• NFL.com. Full PPR by default.
• CBS Sports. 6-point passing TDs (not 4). Otherwise Standard rules.
• DraftKings (DFS). Full PPR. Yardage bonuses: +3 for a 300-yard passing game, +3 for a 100-yard rushing game, +3 for a 100-yard receiving game. Interceptions and fumbles cost −1 instead of −2.
• FanDuel (DFS). Half-PPR. Same yardage bonuses as DraftKings. Interceptions and fumbles −1.

The selected format is remembered for your browser. Switch it once and every sim you run after will use that format.

Saved sims

Both single-game results and full-season results can be saved. Sign-in required.

Single game. On any result page, hit the save icon. Give the sim a name or take the default. Up to 10 saved single sims per account. Find them at /Simulation/MySaved. Click any saved sim to re-open the result page.

Season. Same idea on the Season Sim result page. Up to 5 saved seasons per account. Open them from the same My Saved area.

Saved sims keep the box scores, the standings, the leaders, the team stats. They do not store the full play-by-play log. When you re-open a saved sim, the recap and the stats are all there, but the snap-by-snap play log will show "game detail unavailable" since that data is not retained.

To delete a saved sim, hit the delete button on its card. To rename, edit in place.

Sims that you have run but not saved live in server memory for two hours, then drop off. Save anything you want to keep.

FAQ

Do I need an account? No, not to run sims. Yes, if you want to save sims, build custom teams, or run leagues.

Why do I keep getting roughly the same result when I run the same matchup twice? The engine is graded play by play, so good teams tend to beat bad teams most of the time. Raise the randomness slider on the Season Sim setup to dial up variance, or run a batch of 10 single games on the Single Game tab to see the spread.

Can I run a 2013 player against a 2024 defence? Yes. Stat Year is per team. Set Home to 2013, Away to 2024, run the matchup.

Why does the Ask the OC keep suggesting the same play? It does not. The recommender stays inside your active formation when it can, so suggestions cluster inside one playbook. Flip the formation pill (Shotgun to Trips to Empty, for example) and Ask again to see other suggestions. The recommender also avoids the last two plays you ran on purpose.

Can I coach both sides of the same game? Not in one session. Coach Mode hands you one sideline. If you want to run both sides, open the same matchup in a separate coach session and play one side at a time.

Why does my custom team not show up in the team picker? Make sure you hit Save in the builder. The builder has a draft state that is separate from the saved state. After saving, reload the Sim Hub and the team will appear in the dropdowns.

How is the fantasy points column calculated? The engine tracks every yard, every reception, every TD, every turnover, every kicking event per play, then applies whichever scoring rules you have selected. Change the format on the dropdown and the column re-scores live.

What happens if I close the browser mid-Coach game? The session is lost. Coach sessions live in server memory for the duration of your visit and are not persisted to your account. Keep the tab open until the game ends.

What years are available? 2013 to the current season. We have full per-player ratings for every team in every year in that range. More seasons are coming and the 2013 floor will roll back.

Does the engine model real things like fumbles, two-point conversions, and onside kicks? Yes. Fumbles fire on running and passing plays. Two-point conversions are a separate play type from the goal line. Onside kicks have a recovery rate around 10 to 12 percent.

Does weather affect the game? Not currently. The engine treats every game as a fair-weather indoor matchup. Weather is on the list for a future update.

How accurate are the playoff seedings? Real NFL tiebreaker rules are applied (head-to-head, division win percentage, common opponent percentage, conference win percentage, strength of victory, strength of schedule, points for and against, point differential). Playoff seeding follows the modern format with 7 teams per conference.

Can I share a saved sim with a friend? Saved sims are private to your account. To share a result, screenshot the page or send a description. Public-share links are on the roadmap.

What if I find a bug or want a feature? Send a note through the contact link at the bottom of any page. Include the URL, the steps you took, and what you expected to happen. Bug reports go into the queue and we work them in priority order.

Is the Sim Hub free? Yes. Every feature on this page is free to use. Account signup is free.

Where do I start if I have never used it before? The two best on-ramps depend on what you came for. For fantasy: pick your starter’s matchup on the Single Game tab, set the count to 10, hit Simulate Game, read the average fantasy points line. For replay fans: pick two teams from any two years between 2013 and today, hit Game Day, watch the game play out. For everything else: pick the matchup you most want to see and click Coach Game.