How did I not know there's been an NFL football board game on sale for over a decade?!

For a few months in 2025, I had started thinking about making my own football board game. I was even thinking of maybe trying my hand at a Kickstarter.

I was envisioning a game board modeled after a football field, with a little football token and a little 1st down marker. The 2 players would play competing cards against each other that represented play calls, and then roll dice to determine the outcome of the play. I hadn't quite figured out how the length of a game would be determined, or the specifics of how the different play cards would play off of each other. I also had vague visions of a team-building aspect in which each player could draft a selection of "star" players on the team, who could be optionally invoked at specific times to swing a play in that team's favor.

It was all very early and conceptual.

But as far as I knew, there weren't any football board games on the market. Oh sure, there were football-themed skins of legacy board games. You know, NFL Monopoly (or the more generic NFL-Opoly), NFL-themed chess and checkers sets, and stuff like that. But I wasn't aware of any board games that were about modeling or simulating the sport of football. Well, not entirely. I did have an old VHS-based football board game, and I remember playing a pen-and-paper football game with a family friend when I was young. But there weren't any "real", modern football board games, that I knew of. At least, I had never seen one on the shelves of any board game stores I had ever visited.

So imagine my surprise, when I was holiday shopping at Target, and I saw this game, NFL Gameday on the shelf!

I looked at the back of the box, and the board looked almost exactly like what I had envisioned for my hypothetical football board game. The ball and 1st down marker are even magnetic to prevent them from accidentally shifting too much during play! That's a good idea that I hadn't come up with! And low and behold, the players are playing opposing offensive and defensive play cards against each other. This looked like a simple, and possibly even more elegant version of what I was dreaming in my head. Someone had already beaten me to it.

But, as I read the rules, I realized that this game was far simpler than what I would want from a football board game. So maybe my dream game didn't quite exist yet? Or maybe it does, because while researching information about this game, I stumbled onto another game that I had never heard of before, called 1st & Goal (review coming soon!). And that game, looked like a more sophisticated version of NFL Gameday, and closer to my vision of a hypothetical dream football game.

I just had to play this game, and also try to track down a copy of 1st & Goal to see if a football board game would actually work.

Rock, paper, fumble

And yes, the concept does seem to be viable. The idea of opposing players picking a "play" card from a hand of cards does, indeed, fundamentally work. NFL GameDay's implementation, however, is overly simple for my liking. Essentially, the offense picks a vague concept, such as "run", "pass", "play action", or a few other options; and the defense picks concepts like "run defense", "pass defense", "blitz", "penalty", or "turnover". You match up the 2 cards against each other, and they tell you exactly what the outcome of the play is. Move the ball token on the field accordingly, and then repeat until a player scores or is forced to punt.

The cards have a basic rock-paper-scissors style relationship against each other. A "run defense" card cancels out a "run offense" card, but allows a "pass offense" card to gain yards. An "interception" defensive card forces a turnover against any passing offense card, while giving up double yardage against runs. And so forth.

There's a lot of randomness here. You're largely dependent on the luck of the draw. It's largely a guessing game of what you think the other player will play, but the nature of the cards means that the opponent can play pretty much anything and almost any time. As such, this feels only slightly more strategic and thoughtful than playing football-themed War.

The simple nature of the core gameplay means that the game moves very quickly. Each player just picks a card, you both show them at the same time, and you move the ball accordingly. Rinse, and repeat. Punts and kickoffs are handled by just drawing the top card off a "special teams" deck, which tells you exactly where to start the ball. Field goals and extra points are handled by rolling a die.

The game is played in 2 halves, with a half ending when the draw decks of offensive and defensive plays are depleted, and the players run out of cards to play. Then reshuffle, kickoff again to start the 2nd half, and play till the draw decks are depleted again. If the score is still tied, play a third, overtime, half, using classic sudden death rules. The whole thing will take about an hour -- maybe longer if you go to overtime.

Chunk plays

Another thing that makes the game more random and chaotic is the amount of yards gained from the cards. All changes in field position happen in multiples of 5 yards. There are no 2 yard runs. Pretty much all offensive run cards are either 10 yard or 15 yard gains. If an offensive play isn't canceled by the defensive card, it's usually a first down. So players don't really have to consider calling conservative run plays for short gains, versus more aggressive pass plays for longer gains. Almost every card is a chunk gain and a first down!

This means that offenses are kind of all-or-nothing. Many drives just move down the field, 10 or 20 yards at a time, if the defense is guessing wrong. Or, if the defense guesses right 3 times in a row, the drive is basically a 3-and-out and a punt. Or its a turnover. There are a lot of turnovers! Turnover cards are not as common in the defensive deck, but there's no way for the offense to know that the defense may have a turnover card. So there's no "safe" play call. If you call a pass, and the defense calls an interception, then it's a turnover. If you play a run, and the defense plays a fumble, then it's a turnover. And if the offense plays a Play Action, then either an interception or a fumble card will force a turnover. Worse yet, if the offense calls a run Draw against a fumble card, it's a scoop-and-score for the defense; and if the offense calls a screen against an interception, then it's a pick-6.

The game can swing wildly on these cards. This can make it a lot of fun if the players aren't taking things too seriously. (A couple of beers certainly helps!) But it also means that the game doesn't feel very strategic, and it doesn't feel very satisfying to win, since it all comes down to luck.

Rules committee is asleep at the job

I also have a lot of complaints with the game's rules. They are streamlined, and the entire rule book is a single centerfold page. That means it's extremely quick and easy to pick up and play. It also means that the rules fail to cover a lot of common edge cases, and they miss a lot of rules and strategy of real football.

For example, the rules do not, technically, allow for kicking a field goal unless it is 4th down. The rules also do not allow for a last-second field goal attempt at the end of a half. So if you have 1 Offensive card left in a half, or just played the last Offensive card, and are in Field Goal range, and it isn't 4th down, can you kick a walk-off field goal? Heck, what if it is 4th down, but the last Offensive card was played? Can the offense still kick a walk-off field goal before the half ends? I don't know, because the rules say nothing about this common edge case.

There are also no onside kicks and no QB kneel to run out the clock. In fact, the best way to run out the clock is paradoxically to call timeouts.

Timeouts are a weird rule, and possibly the worst rule in the game, in my opinion. Basically, when a team calls a timeout, both teams discard their hand of cards and draw a new hand. This makes strategic board game sense. You use the timeout to mulligan a bad hand. Thematically, however, calling a timeout effectively runs more time off the "game clock" (in stark contrast to how timeouts actually work in football), by cycling through the draw decks faster.

As such, you actually want to use your timeouts earlier in a half, when you still have plenty of time to run plays. Conversely, you want to be very careful about using timeouts late in a half, because you might accidentally cycle through the deck too fast, and end the half before you want to. This actually leads to a whacky strategy in which one side or the other can actually use their timeouts at the end of a half to run out the clock. If there are 5 or less cards in the draw decks, a timeout basically brings the game straight to the final hand of plays. And if a timeout is called while there are no cards left in the draw decks, it (as far as I can tell from the rules) immediately ends the half.

There is a simple house rule to fix this problem. Instead of discarding your cards when a timeout is called, both teams should put their hand back in the respective draw deck, and then shuffle the draw deck and draw a new hand. This small rule change maintains the strategic value of timeouts, while also preserving game length. Shuffling a small number of discards back into the draw deck could be another way of changing timeouts such that they conserve or add time to the game clock, instead of running it out. But either nobody on NFL GameDay's design team thought of this, or the idea of making the game as quick as possible took priority over accurately modeling the sport of football. So much for "the ultimate football board game"!

There have also been a few instances of a player taking too long to decide which card to play -- especially in a team game, in which the 2 players on the team disagree about which card to play. In this case, a 30-second "Play Clock" hourglass, combined with a "Delay Of Game" rule, might have been worth including.

Equipment manager is also asleep on the job

Production wise, the game looks pretty good, but has a few nagging design or manufacturing complaints. The board is modeled after an NFL field and the whole surface is magnetic. This allows magnetic team logos to be placed in each end zone so that each player can pretend to be playing as their favorite NFL team. This has no effect on gameplay, as none of the teams play any differently from one another. But it is a fun cosmetic inclusion that adds a special NFL flavor that other football board games lack.

The NFL shield logo covers the middle of the board and makes the yardlines between the 40's difficult to read. This isn't a big problem, since all field position changes happen in increments of 5 yards. It's easy enough to estimate the position of the 45 and 50 yard lines.

My biggest complaint with the components is the clear plastic discs that are used for scoreboard tracking. These discs can be difficult to see, especially under certain lighting conditions. They can also be easily shifted accidentally. A player with loose-fitting long sleeves, or with long hair, leaning over the board can easily brush one of the discs and move them. It has happened multiple times in every match I've played.

The football and 1st Down marker are both magnetic (even though they don't stick to the board very well). Why weren't magnetic pieces used for the scoreboard? Dials and sliders probably would have been expensive overkill, but I could easily have seen a hollowed-out magnetic square being used in the place of the discs. That way, the tracker sticks to the board and is difficult to accidentally move, and it still allows visibility.

Casual football for casual fans

Overall, NFL GameDay is casual, stupid football fun for a casual setting. It can be a great, simple diversion, considering how easy it is to learn and play. It can be a good side game for a large board gaming meetup, or an activity to get amped up for a fantasy draft party. And my 4-year old really loves to play with the board and magnetic pieces!

Although turnovers can be excessively frequent, actual final scores seem to be fairly believable. A lot of the games we played ended in scores like 35-30, 28-17, and so forth. I only experienced a single massive blowout of 63-10, in which my opponent seemed to be reading my mind and always had the perfect card picked out. I had to double check that I wasn't sitting in front of a mirror.

I'm sure that once I try 1st & Goal, I'll probably never come back to NFL GameDay again (except maybe as a casual side game at a larger board game get-together). That being said, I do not regret the purchase 1 bit. In fact, playing this game has me very excited to try 1st & Goal, and I'm considering experimenting with using NFL GameDay's board with 1st & Goal's cards and rules. That way, I can hypothetically get all the depth and strategy of 1st & Goal, and also the NFL theming of NFL GameDay. If that works out, then NFL GameDay will basically become a makeshift "NFL expansion pack" for 1st & Goal, and will definitely be worth the purchase.

WHAT I LIKE

• A football board game!
• Simple to learn and play
• Moves at a quick pace
• Board looks cool
• NFL theme and team endzone magnets

WHAT I DON'T LIKE

• Overly simple, rock/paper/scissors strategy
• Timeouts actually make the game shorter
• Rules overlook some common football situations
• Special teams is completely random
• Clear plastic chips used for score-keeping are hard to see and are easy to accidentally move
• Magnetic ball and 1st down marker aren't very strong and don't stick to the board very well
• Box says it can be played by 2-4 players, but there are no rules for a 3 or 4-player game

FINAL GRADE: C-

Manufacturer(s): MasterPieces Puzzle Company.
Lead Designer(s): Unknown
Artist(s): Unknown
Original release: 2013
MSRP: $40 USD
Player(s): 2 or 4 players (best with 2)
Age Recommendation: 9 years old and up
Game Length: 60-90 minutes
Official site: www.masterpiecesinc.com/products/nfl-gameday-board-game