About PlayoffBlitz

The beginning

We sat across from each other in cubicles. The NFL season was coming to a close, and after some discussion about how great football was, we began to question why there wasn't a good playoff fantasy game. Our internet searches left us completely unsatisfied, so we made our own. We wanted something simple, yet challenging and fun.

It was 2003 when we first gathered a group of coworkers and friends to try the new format. In the early years we managed the points and teams by spreadsheet, and it developed into exactly what we were looking for: no draft, nobody owns anybody, and every player can only be used once all season. The fantasy world calls that one and done now. Back then it was just how we played.

The internet

In 2007 we made the leap and put the game online for others to enjoy. We learned a lot in our first postseason online, and we have been improving the site ever since.

Portland

The west winds came a calling. In 2012 Chad, my partner, dear friend, long-time fantasy football junkie and original co-owner, could take it no more, so he packed up his wagons and headed west.

I was pretty nervous. Chad was always the brains, the smart one, the better tech guy than me, and I wasn't sure I could keep everything going without him. But he had lost so many years in a row in his own playoff league that he just could not do it again. To the victor goes the spoils.

And then there was one

That's right, people. One guy! I answer the emails, I keep the scores flowing on game day, and I play in my own league too. I'll get to your message as fast as I can. A lot of our leagues have been together more than a decade, and some of those folks have been crushing each other since the spreadsheet days.

The redesign

For a long stretch the site stayed pretty much the way we first built it. It worked, so I left it alone, and the years went by.

That changed about two years ago, when a brilliant young designer named Cecelia sent over some fresh ideas for what the game could look like. She was just getting started back then. Since finishing her education as a digital media designer she has redesigned the whole thing: the brand, the way the game plays on a screen, the website you're reading, and the mobile app. Nearly everything you see is her work, and she's helping me grow the business now too.

The rebuild

I had wanted to build this version for years, and the technology finally caught up. Scoring that keeps pace with the games, a site that works the same on a phone as it does at a desk, and the kind of stability I would not have promised anybody a decade ago.

In 2026 we rebuilt PlayoffBlitz from the ground up: a new website, a new live scoring engine, and two games instead of one. The playoff game is the original, the one we've played since 2003, and it isn't going anywhere. A regular season game now runs alongside it, weeks 1 to 16. Two separate games for two seasons of fun. Mobile apps for iPhone and Android are on the way.

The regular season

I didn't think this format would work for the regular season. It was built for the playoffs, and I figured sixteen weeks of it would wear thin. But you kept asking. Every year the same question: Do you offer this in the regular season? Every year I had to say no. In 2025 we finally pulled the trigger, and I played a full season myself. I was wrong.

There's no draft to prepare for. No waiver wire to study on a Tuesday night, no bidding against somebody for a running back I'm not sure about, no trade talks that go nowhere. I open it up, look at who's available, set eight starters and get on with my night.

The part I didn't see coming is the players. In regular fantasy football you spend the year staring at the same fifteen or twenty guys you happened to draft. Here I get the whole league. Every week I'm picking between the best quarterbacks in football, the best running backs, the best receivers. Spend one and he's gone, sure. Next week there's the next great quarterback, the next receiver about to have a monster week.

I won't lie, it got tight down the stretch, finding a running back in week 15 when all the good ones have been spent. That turned out to be my favorite part, because the strategy is the right guy in the right week. Do I use the best guy on the board today, or save him for the week I think he'll go off? Spend him now and I'm covered today and thin in December. Hold him too long and I've wasted him, or worse, he gets hurt and I never get to use him at all.

What hasn't changed

PlayoffBlitz is still a small family business run by regular people who love football. There's no big corporation behind it. Back in 2010 our site said we say "nay" to the advertising way, and that's still true. I tried it a few years back. It sucked and I took it back out. No ad networks, no selling your data, no junk between you and your league.

This has never been my day job. I have a regular one I go to every morning, and PlayoffBlitz gets my nights and weekends. It doesn't pay my bills, and that isn't why I keep it going.

I keep it going because of you. Every year, before I've even opened the season, the emails start: When are we starting? Are you running it again? We can't wait. Twenty-odd years in and you all still show up.

And who knows. Maybe it takes off one day. Season 24, surely that'll be the year. Now there's a whole crew of brilliant young marketing and entrepreneurial business minds pushing us forward: Vaiduct bringing the technology, and Cecelia bringing the creative vision. I like our chances. Maybe one of those big corporations comes knocking. A guy can dream, right?

So here's to another great season. Good luck in your leagues. And as my dear friend has said on his way out the door after every regular season fantasy draft we've ever sat through: "Sorry about your teams." - Jay Farmer, golf guru and author.

Remember, when you email us, a real person answers. Me.

Ciao. Catch you on the flip,
Nick