NFL 2026 Projection Pack - Move the Chains: Sunday + 3rd and Long

The 2026 NFL season, graded before a down has been played, with two ways to play it.

All 32 teams are rated 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, this pack becomes the souvenir and the gap is the story.

Game one: Move the Chains: Sunday

A brand new possession game, and this is the Pro Football version of the game included in Collegiate Football. There is no board, no field and no yardage. Each team carries two letter grades, one for offence and one for defence, and before kick-off you cross them on the Match-Up Chart to get a Drive Grade. 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, and a turnover hands the other side a short field, so their next drive plays one grade better.

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.

Game two: 3rd and Long

The quick-resolution engine that already runs every NFL season from 1950 to 2025. Two d100, one roll per team per game, modifiers pre-calculated for all 272 games of the 2026 schedule, from the Wednesday night opener in Seattle 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.

Use them together. Play the 2026 season on 3rd and Long for pace, and 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.

The Move the Chains app. An offline browser app that runs the drive game: 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 automatically, 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. Roll the drives you care about by hand and sim the rest, or sim the whole game in one click and read it back. When you are done, copy the finished drive log as text or download it as a .txt or a .csv for your spreadsheet. Saves your game in the browser. Prefer the table to the screen? 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 in.

What you get

Move the Chains: Sunday rulebook, 22 pages. Match-Up Chart, three era Possession Charts, kicking by era, the short field, home field and hurry-up, every NFL overtime rule, the two-point conversion, seven narrative tables, a worked game with every roll real, optional rules, and a Drive Log for each era with the chart printed on the sheet.

Move the Chains: Sunday 2026 ratings booklet. All 32 teams, projected record, offence grade, defence grade, points for and against per game, with the method on the page.

Move the Chains: Sunday app, one HTML file, works offline on any browser, with the printable Game Sheet creator.

Sheet 1, Drive Log: a blank one-page scoresheet. Sheet 2, Narrative Tables: all seven on one page.

3rd and Long 2026 NFL Projection Pack, 14 pages. Full rules and quick start, all 32 team ratings, the 18-week schedule with every modifier pre-calculated, blank standings, scoring and overtime tables, and the playoff bracket through to Super Bowl LXI.

3rd and Long Season Schedule, 19 pages: every game of 2026 with day, date and kick-off time, a score box per game, and blank playoff rounds from the Wild Card to Super Bowl LXI to fill in from your own standings.

3rd and Long Playsheet, Scoring Charts and Modifier Lookup, the same reference sheets that ship in every 3rd and Long bundle, plus a black and white edition of the Modifier Lookup for printers without colour.

Print and play, A4, black and white. One d10 for Move the Chains, two d100 for 3rd and Long. Solo or two players.

Already own The Complete NFL History? The full Move the Chains: Sunday library, every NFL season from 1950 to 2025 and the AFL 1960 to 1969, is coming to that bundle as a free update. This pack is the 2026 season only.