How Rebuild works

NBA

Build PG, SG, SF, PF, C and a sixth man in any order. Pick one player in each of Years 1–4 and two in Year 5. The sixth-man slot is open from your first pick, whenever an eligible bench player is available in that draft year and round. Your first season starts in Year 6. Play ten seasons; between seasons, keep your team or replace one player from that year’s draft.

Supported starting years: 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003 and 2005. These windows have all required draft roles, qualified sixth men, and historical opponent standings.

NFL

Choose one of three coaches hired for your starting NFL season. Each year has a curated set of documented hires, including promotions and moves from other teams or college. This is not the full hiring market. Your coach stays for the whole rebuild. Your compact roster is QB, RB, one receiver (WR or TE), DL, LB and DB.

Draft one offensive and one defensive player in each of the first three years. In Years 4 and 5, keep or upgrade one player on each side. Play five seasons starting in Year 6, with the same two optional upgrades between seasons. Supported starts: 1999–2011.

Your draft choices

The game picks a supported starting year uniformly. Each spin picks uniformly from rounds containing a player for your open position. Historical round numbers are preserved. A round can repeat in a later year. You have one optional round reroll for the entire run; it picks a different eligible round.

Multiple-position players can fill any listed eligible slot. No player can occupy two slots. Picks cannot be undone. You may cancel a replacement before spinning; after the spin you must choose a replacement. Your previous player stays saved until that pick is confirmed.

Coach ability uses the existing career-record model, including playoffs, with small samples pulled toward average. Added coach records run through 2025; availability follows the starting year, but ratings use their NFL career rather than only what was known at the time. Existing saved runs and challenges retain their original coach choices and ratings.

Player strength and season records

Players keep their measured historical peak ability. There is no aging, injury, salary cap or automatic improvement. Career totals on cards are for display, not the rating formula. NBA strength includes offensive fit, spacing and defense, with a separate bench-season input for the sixth man.

NBA uses the shared historical projection engine with a Rebuild-specific six-player calibration against historical team outcomes. NFL uses the shared possession engine: each selected player contributes their own role value, the coach adds their measured contribution, and unselected blocking, receivers and special teams remain neutral. A receiver is not counted as an entire receiving corps.

Regular-season records are projections against the shared league reference schedule, on an 82-game NBA or 17-game NFL scale, including older or shortened seasons. Keeping the identical lineup keeps its projected record. These are fantasy projections, not forecasts of real historical careers.

Playoffs

After each season, your record appears automatically, followed by each playoff round in order. Once the run finishes, continue to the next year.

Your projected winning percentage must reach the historical qualification threshold for that year: the 16th team in the NBA, or 12th NFL team before 2020 and 14th thereafter. Opponents’ strengths use their actual season point margins. Your team replaces the final qualifier.

This is a simplified fantasy bracket seeded across the whole league, without historical conference or division restrictions. NBA matchups are best of seven, except first rounds before the 2002–03 season are best of five. NFL is single elimination, with four first-round byes in a 12-team field or two in a 14-team field, then a neutral-site Super Bowl. Game scores decide winners. Saved seeds make retries reproducible.

Leaderboards and saved games

Rankings compare championships, then regular-season wins (a tie counts as half a win), then cumulative projected point margin. Score = 1,000 per title + 1 per win + 0.5 per tie. NBA and NFL have separate boards. Daily resets at midnight Eastern; weekly runs Monday through Sunday. Completion time is recorded by the server.

Your browser resumes unfinished games for 30 days. Completed results have permanent links and final-lineup images. Play Again starts fresh. Challenges share the starting year and coach options, with fresh round spins.

Sources

Draft identity and career records reuse the audited NBA and NFL Draft Class datasets sourced from Basketball Reference and Pro Football Reference. NBA historical standings come from ESPN’s season standings feed; NFL historical standings reuse the official NFL season archive. Bench and coach evidence reuse the Daily Challenge’s verified role catalog. Each release retains source hashes, scoring version and immutable saved results.