Two-Minute Drill puts you in the head coach's headset for the end of a real NFL game. You make the calls; every snap is played out with a real NFL play; and every call is graded against what the best call would have been. This page explains each part in detail.
The spots
Each spot is a real moment from a real game, most of them from the last minutes of NFL games in recent seasons, playoffs included, and a few famous ones from other years or from college football: the real score, clock, down, distance, field position and timeouts, with the two real teams. There are 740 of them, in three kinds:
- Two-minute drill: you're behind and need a score before time runs out.
- Protect the lead: you're ahead and need to run the clock out without giving the ball back.
- Tied, or the end of the half: get into scoring range without leaving the other team time to answer.
The players on the field are the 22 who were on the field for that snap. Each has a rating from 40 to 99: his percentile at his position among NFL players as of the week of that game, from his real production. They are our own ratings, not a video game's.
Calling a play
On offense you pick Run, Pass, RPO or Trick, then the play. There are 27 calls in all: outside, off-tackle and inside runs to either side, up the middle, a QB sneak and a designed QB run; RPOs; quick passes, screens, deep shots, play action and rollouts; a Hail Mary late; and trick plays (flea-flicker, end-around, a receiver pass and a direct snap).
- Passing: every receiver shows his route on the field. Tap any receiver to change his route. In Pro games (for now), tap ✏️ Draw and draw your own: tap a receiver, then drag where he should go. A drawn route plays as the real route it is closest to, at the depth you drew it (the real throws on that route that went about that deep). Then tap a name to pick who gets the ball (the first one is picked to start) and tap Snap at the foot of the calls to throw it. Play action, a rollout and "get out of bounds" are optional switches.
- Personnel (optional): pick 11, 12, 21 or 13 personnel and who plays, from that game's real roster.
- The clock: tempo (no-huddle, huddle or milk it), timeouts, spikes, kneel-downs and field goals appear when they matter. You can also run the clock down to three seconds, call timeout and kick.
- Two-point tries: after a touchdown you can kick or go for two, and call the play from the 2.
- Defense: when they have the ball you call the defense (a blitz, a loaded box or playing soft), and on their kicks you choose to go for the block or play it safe.
What happens on the snap
The result is a real NFL play. The game keeps a library of 160,141 real plays from the 2022 to 2026 seasons, each labeled with the call it was, the situation (down, distance, field zone, score and clock) and the defense's look. When you call a play, the game draws one of the real plays of that call from the same kind of situation, against the look the defense showed. Matchups shift the odds the way they did on these plays: a blitz loses to quick throws and screens, a loaded box loses to screens and play action, and playing soft (no blitz, seven in coverage) takes away the quick game and screens but gives up runs.
The clock follows the NFL rulebook: it stops on incompletions, out of bounds in the last two minutes of a half (and the last five of the game), on timeouts, at the two-minute warning and after scores, and the play clock runs between snaps. Players run and tackle at speeds measured from NFL player tracking.
How your calls are graded
Every call is graded on win chance: how likely your team is to win from where the game stands. Before the result is shown, the game simulates the rest of the game hundreds to thousands of times for every option you had, and compares the win chance of your call with the best option. The result of the play doesn't change the grade: a good call that didn't work is still a good call.
- Green ✓: the best call, within half a point of win chance of it, or so close that the simulation can't tell them apart.
- Yellow ≈: close, within 2 points.
- Orange !: costly, within 5 points.
- Red ✗: a big miss, more than 5 points worse than the best call.
The big number after each snap is how that play moved your win chance.
Your daily score
At the end of the day your drive gets a percentile against NFL play-callers: the share of 6,000 simulated NFL coaches who did worse than you on the same drive, counting the calls and the result. Each simulated coach calls plays as often as NFL play-callers do in that situation, and each reads the situation with a different level of skill, as many worse than the league's habits as better, so the scores spread from 0 to 100 and calls like the league's land near 50. Their calls are graded with exactly the same numbers as yours. When nothing anyone could call changes the win chance (down 25 in the third quarter), those calls count for nobody and the result decides. You also see where you rank among everyone who played that day, how your win chance compares with a typical play-caller, and which NFL head coach your calls look most like (how often you throw, go deep, go for it on fourth down and go for two).
Survivor
Survivor plays random real fourth quarters back to back. Win to keep going; one loss ends the run. A game tied at the end goes to overtime under the NFL's rules: both teams get the ball, then the next score wins. Put a name on the survivor board to see how your run compares.
Where the data comes from
All game situations, plays and player statistics come from public NFL data published by nflverse: play-by-play, player participation and Next Gen Stats charting, and FTN charting (FTN Data via nflverse, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0). The win-chance and clock models are fit on the same play-by-play. Nothing in the game is invented: every snap you see happened in a real NFL game, and every number on your results screen is computed from the game you just played and from the real scores of everyone who played that day.
What it can't tell you
The grades are estimates from simulation, not certainties: a model can't know everything a real coach knows on the sideline, like an injury, a matchup he saw on film or the weather getting worse. And each snap is one real play drawn from many, so the same call can work one day and fail the next, just as it does in real games.