How to use the draft board

1. What this app is

Elite 8 Draft Board is a scorekeeping tool for running a fantasy football draft. It gives you the board, the draft order, the clock, the player list, the budgets and the trade paperwork. It records the picks you make.

It is not a league host. It does not play out your season, hold entry fees, or pay out prizes. Whatever your league does around the draft is your own arrangement.

2. Your first draft

Opening the app drops you straight onto a working board — eight teams, ready to go.

1. Set the number of teams. Tap 👥 Teams and enter anything from 2 to 32.
2. Name the teams. Click any team name at the top of its column and type over it. Names are limited to 20 characters.
3. Set the draft order. Tap 📋 Draft Order. Use 🎲 Randomize Draft Order for a fair shuffle, or the arrows to arrange it by hand. Position 1 picks first.
4. Pick the draft type if you do not want the default. 🏈 Draft Type offers Linear, Snake or Auction — see section 4. The app starts in Linear.
5. Draft. The banner at the top tells you who is on the clock. Tap ⏱ Draft This Pick, or click any open slot on the board, then search for a player and tap them.
6. Export when you are done. 📥 Export CSV writes a spreadsheet of the whole draft to your device.

3. Roster slots and positions

Every team has 18 roster slots — nine starters and nine bench spots:

Each slot only accepts players who can legally play there. The starting nine are shown in gold; bench rows are dashed and quieter.

DEF means Defense/Special Teams — the whole unit, including return touchdowns and blocked kicks. That is one roster spot, exactly as in every major fantasy platform. You do not draft individual defensive players.

4. The three draft types

Change this any time under 🏈 Draft Type. Switching type never clears your picks.

Linear Draft — the default

The same order every round. If you pick 3rd, you pick 3rd in every round: 1.03, 2.03, 3.03 and so on. It is the simplest format to follow and there is no money involved. Note that picking first is a real advantage every round, which is why many leagues prefer snake.

Snake Draft

The order reverses each round, so the person who picked last in round 1 picks first in round 2. This evens out the advantage of an early first pick. Two patterns:

• Standard Snake — R1 forward, R2 backward, R3 forward, and so on.
• 3rd Round Reversal — R1 forward, R2 backward, R3 backward again, then alternating. This softens the value of the 1.01 pick further, and is a common house rule in competitive leagues.

Pick Enforcement (snake and linear only)

• Guided — the current pick is highlighted, but any open slot stays clickable. Best for a relaxed draft where you are entering picks for everyone.
• Locked — only the team on the clock can be filled. Best when everyone is drafting for themselves and you want the order strictly enforced.

Auction Draft

Every team gets a budget ($300 by default, changeable under 💰 Budget). Teams take turns nominating a player, then everyone bids. Highest bidder wins them at that price. See section 8 for how to actually run one.

5. Draft order

📋 Draft Order is where you set who picks when. The team columns on the board are the draft order — column 1 picks first.

• 🎲 Randomize Draft Order shuffles fairly. Do this before you start, not halfway through.
• The ▲ ▼ arrows move a team up or down one position.

6. The pick timer

⏱️ Timer sets how long each team gets. Enter any number of seconds up to an hour, or 0 / Turn Off for no limit. It applies to snake and linear drafts — auctions have their own separate bid timer.

Once a timer is set, controls appear in the "On the Clock" banner:

• ▶️ Start / ⏸️ Pause — the timer does not run until you start it, so nobody is caught out by a clock they did not know was live.
• 🔄 Reset — back to the full duration for the current pick.

The display turns amber and then red as time runs low. When it hits zero the app auto-drafts the best available player that the team can legally roster, and marks the pick ⏱ AUTO in the pick log.

7. Making and undoing picks

Drafting a player

Three ways in, all landing on the same player list:

• Tap ⏱ Draft This Pick in the clock banner — the safest route, because it always targets whoever is actually on the clock.
• Click any open slot on the board.
• In an auction, tap 💰 Nominate Player.

Then search by player name, team abbreviation (KC) or full team name (Chiefs), filter with the position tabs, and tap a player. Pressing Enter drafts the top result. Players already taken are greyed out and labelled with who has them.

Players not in the list

Use the Unlisted Player row at the bottom of the player list — type a name, choose a position, optionally add a team and bye week, then Add. Useful for a rookie the feed has not picked up, or a made-up entry in a mock draft.

Removing a pick

Hover or tap a filled slot and use the ✕ in its corner. The player goes back into the pool, the slot's pick becomes available again, and the removal is recorded in the pick log as (REMOVED) so the history stays honest.

Prices (auction only)

Each filled slot has a $ box you can edit directly if you need to correct what someone paid. The pick log updates to match.

8. Running an auction

Set 🏈 Draft Type to Auction. The banner becomes your auction control panel.

1. The team on the clock taps 💰 Nominate Player and picks someone. Bidding opens at $1.
2. Bidding. On one shared screen you get a button per team — tap a team's button to bid for them. Teams that cannot afford the next bid, or have no legal slot for that player, are disabled. In a shared room you get bid increments (+$1 / +$5 / +$10 / +$25) and a custom amount box.
3. Sell. Tap 🔨 Sold! to award the player to the highest bidder, or let the bid timer run out.
4. Nomination passes to the next team with money and roster space.

Auction settings

• Auction Bid Timer — seconds per bidding window, or 0 for unlimited. Straight Countdown runs to zero regardless of bids; Reset on Bid restarts the clock every time someone bids, which is how live auctions usually feel.
• Nomination Pass — lets a team skip its nomination turn. Off by default, so the nominating team must put someone up.
• Budget Exhaustion Fill Mode — once every budget is gone but rosters are not full, bidding is pointless. The app switches to filling the remaining spots in Linear, Snake or 3RR order — your choice — and you just click slots to draft.

9. Trades

Open ⇄ Trades from the header, or the small ⇄ Trade button on any team's column.

1. Choose which team you are trading as and who you are trading with.
2. Tick the assets each side sends — players always, draft picks in snake and linear, and dollars in an auction.
3. The preview shows what each roster and budget looks like afterwards. If the trade is illegal, it tells you why and Send Offer stays disabled.
4. Send it. The other side accepts or declines.

Trade review

• Commissioner (default) — only the moderator can approve or veto. Recommended: league voting tends to kill trades people merely dislike rather than actual collusion.
• League Vote — every uninvolved manager can veto, and one third of them kills it. The tally is shown but never who voted.
• No Review — executes the moment both sides accept.

The Review Window (30 seconds to 5 minutes) is how long a trade sits before auto-approving. A draft is over in about 90 minutes, so the usual 48-hour window would never resolve.

10. Drafting together (shared rooms)

🌐 Multiplayer lets your league draft from separate devices, with picks syncing live. This needs an account — see section 11.

Creating a room

1. Choose a room code, or leave it blank for a random one. Codes are 4–16 characters and case-sensitive — MyLeague and myleague are different rooms.
2. Optionally tick List this league publicly so anyone can find it.
3. Tap Create New Draft Room. This clears the board so everyone starts level. You become the host. A new room always starts at 8 teams; change that with 👥 Teams — any size from 2 to 32 is included. Only the host pays. Running leagues needs the higher unlock, and it covers up to 10 leagues a season; everyone you invite joins free with the room code. They will need an account, which is made in the Elite 8 app itself. If you need more than 10 leagues in a season, email nfl@cyngetiklabs.com with your Elite 8 username and we will raise it.
4. Share the code with your league.

Joining

Type the code and tap Join Room, or pick a league from Public leagues. Drafts you are in appear under My drafts on any device you sign in on.

Claiming your team

In a room, each column shows Claim Team. Claiming marks that team as yours so nobody else can draft for you, and it is what lets you propose trades as that team.

Locking the league

Who can do what

Removing a player only really ejects them once the league is locked — otherwise they can rejoin with the code. The app offers to lock at the same time.

11. Accounts and guest mode

Signing in is optional. Here is the honest split:

Drafting alone on one screen? Guest is fine. Drafting with your league, or want your board on more than one device? Make an account — Google sign-in or email and password, then pick a username, which is how your league sees you.

👤 Sign in also holds your display name, your hidden-players list, links to the Terms and Privacy Policy, and Delete my account, which permanently removes your profile, frees your username, and deletes every chat message you sent. Drafts you host are not deleted automatically — delete those first if you want them gone.

12. Chat, reporting and blocking

Shared rooms have a chat drawer — the 💬 button at the bottom right, which appears once you are connected. Messages are capped at 200 characters, and you can send at most one a second. If a room's chat is ever flooded far faster than a person can type, chat pauses itself on everyone's screen and says so — your draft keeps going completely unaffected, and chat comes back on its own after a few minutes.

• Report anyone or anything. Tap the ⋯ on any message, or open 👥 Players in a room, or use 🚩 Report a problem in your account screen — that last one works even when you are not in a room. Reports include a copy of the message, so they still mean something after it is deleted.
• Hide a player. Their chat disappears from your view immediately, including what they already said, and it follows your account to any device. Their picks stay on the board — a shared draft cannot work otherwise.
• Delete your own messages from the same ⋯ menu.
• Hosts can delete any message and remove any player.

You must be at least 13 to use an account.

13. Player data and Sync Roster

Player names, positions, teams and bye weeks come from a public roster feed (Sleeper). The app refreshes it about once a day and caches it on your device so it works offline.

⚡ Sync Roster forces a refresh — worth doing before draft night to pick up rookies, signings and position changes. The badge at the top of the player list tells you the current state.

We do not control that data and cannot guarantee it is complete or current. If something matters to your league, check it. Anything missing can be added with Unlisted Player.

14. Export and the pick log

📜 Pick Log is the full history, newest first — every pick with its round and overall number, auto-drafted picks marked, removals recorded, and prices in an auction.

📥 Export CSV writes a spreadsheet to your device: one row per roster slot, a pick and player column per team, plus totals. In an auction you also get what each team spent and has left. The file never leaves your device — what you do with it afterwards is up to you.

15. Themes and appearance

The palette dropdown offers six colour schemes — Midnight, Cyber Neon, Crimson, Championship, Sunset Amber and Monochrome — and 🌓 Light Mode flips between light and dark.

Both are per-device preferences. Changing yours does not repaint anyone else's screen in a shared room, and it does not touch the draft.

16. Every button, explained

17. Troubleshooting

The board says "Local only" and I wanted to draft with my league

You need to be signed in and in a room. Tap 👤 Sign in, then 🌐 Multiplayer. The Sync pill reads 🟢 Live when picks are actually syncing.

Someone cannot join my room

Room codes are case-sensitive. Check they are typing it exactly. If you have locked the league, no new players can join at all — unlock it, let them in, then lock it again.

The clock is on the wrong team

The team columns are the draft order. Check 📋 Draft Order. If you reordered mid-draft, the sequence for the remaining rounds changes accordingly.

I cannot change the settings

In a shared room, only the moderator can change teams, budget, timer, draft type and order, or reset the board. Those buttons appear dimmed for everyone else.

A player I want is not in the list

Try ⚡ Sync Roster first. If they are still missing, add them with the Unlisted Player row.

The player list looks short, or auto-draft says nobody is left

You are probably on the small offline fallback list because the roster has never synced on this device. Connect to the internet and tap ⚡ Sync Roster.

I was removed from a league

The host can remove players. If the league is unlocked you can rejoin with the code; if it is locked, ask the host.

Something else

Email nfl@cyngetiklabs.com. For anything about another user's behaviour, use 🚩 Report a problem in your account screen so the report reaches us with the context attached.