The draft starts on Thursday night, and that means one thing and one thing only - it’s time for the 2018 version of the Field Gulls Armchair GM Challenge.

As it is every year, the goal of the challenge is to accurately predict as many of the players the Seattle Seahawks will select in the draft as possible. In short, quoting from the 2016 rules, this is how it works:

The Armchair GM Championship is a confidence poll, much like the ones you may have done for the college football bowl season. Everyone will submit a list of 20 names that they believe the Seahawks will draft, in order of how confident they are that the player will be picked by Seattle. The first name on your list will be worth 30 points, the second name 29 points, the third 28 points, and so on and so forth. Once the draft is over, we’ll add up everyone’s points and see which one of us is actually John Schneider in disguise.

If the score ends in a tie, the tiebreaker will two questions that will be included in this year’s version of the challenge. If multiple parties are tied after tallying the points for correctly picking the draft picks, the first and second tiebreakers will be the two additional questions that are required to be answered with the form. If multiple submissions are still tied after tallying the points for the correct picks plus answering the questions, the outcome will turn to the tiebreaker rules of the 2016 challenge. Those tiebreaker rules are,

To quote off of who picked the most players, then who had the highest scoring correct pick, then by who had the higher scoring pick from the lowest round.

Got it? Good.

In summary, you want to pick as many players correctly and then try to get the multiple choice questions correct.

Just for a couple of clarifications, as in years past certain rules and other items are unchanged. Specifically the following apply:

• When entering names, use only the first and last names (do no list position, school or anything else because that makes it tally the points for the submissions)
• Make sure to spell the player’s name correctly. If you misspell it, you get zero points. If you have a question about how to properly input a name (such as one that has an apostrophe or dash), simply put that name in the comments and I’ll provide guidance on how to spell it.
• Multiple submissions from a single participant are fine, but only the last entry for any player will be counted.
• All picks are due before 7 PM Pacific Time on Thursday evening. Why 7 PM Pacific if the draft starts at 5 PM Pacific Time? Because the Seahawks will not be picking before 7 PM, so that will give some fans the chance to get their picks in at the last minute. And if Seattle does pick before 7 PM Pacific Time, then all y’all will get to enjoy seeing me admit to being wrong, which happens about as often as Halley’s Comet comes around, so it’ll be worth missing out on some points. However, it would be wise to not plan to make the submission last minute because if for some reason the Seahawks do make a draft pick before 7 PM Pacific, the deadline will be moved up to five minutes before the pick is first reported on Twitter.
• In order to participate, one needs either a Field Gulls (SB Nation) login or to provide their email address. For transparency purposes, I will put up a link to the spreadsheet that includes everyone’s selections on Friday, however, emails will be removed from that spreadsheet (for obvious reasons). Thus, even those who are not registered users on Field Gulls may participate.
• Only picks submitted through the proper form will be counted, so make sure to submit your picks there. Feel free to post your picks in the comments section, but know that I don’t care if you nail every single selection the Seahawks make, if you don’t submit the picks through the proper channel you don’t get to win.

Speaking of winning, I haven’t had time to figure out yet what the winner will get, so maybe I’ll come up with something and maybe I won’t. We’ll see. I’ve got a busy week and may not have time to decide on something. I’ll keep you posted.

Click here to access the official submission form for the 2018 Field Gulls GM Armchair Challenge.

If you have any issues with the submission form, please leave a note in the comments.