The group chat says "probably," "maybe," and "depends if my sister's still in town." Kickoff is Sunday.
Planning around that is a different job than planning around a real guest list. You're not optimizing for a number. You're trying to make sure nothing falls apart at either end, whether five people turn up or fourteen.
Some things don't care how many people come
Table cover. Banner. Anything that dresses a surface instead of serving a person.
One 54 inch by 102 inch table cover looks exactly as good for six guests as it does for sixteen, and it's the single item that does the most work to make a room look like somebody planned something on purpose. Same with a banner hung in the sightline of the TV.
Buy those first and buy them without hedging. Everything after that is just consumables.
Consumables should overshoot
Plates come 8 to a package, napkins 16, cups 8. Which means your real question isn't how many plates, it's how many packages, and the honest answer is one more than the math says.
Unopened paper plates don't expire. They go in a closet, and in November when somebody decides Thursday night is happening at your place, they're already there. Napkins are 2-ply tissue at 6.5 inches square, so a spare package stores flat and takes up nothing.
Running short in the third quarter, on the other hand, means somebody is eating nachos off a folded paper towel.
The harder uncertainty is jerseys
Headcount is the easy variable. The one that actually changes what you buy is not knowing what allegiances walk through the door.
A table done up in one team's colors is a statement, and it's a great one when you know the room. When you don't, it quietly turns a couple of your guests into visiting fans in their own friend's living room. Some people love that. Some people make the same joke about it for three hours.
The safe structure is generic on the table, specific on the accents. Footballs, field green, goalposts, scoreboard graphics: none of it picks a side, and it all still reads as football the second anyone walks in. Pull the base layer from football party supplies and add one team piece for yourself if you want it.
What runs out first
Napkins. It's always napkins.
Plates get reused, because people set one down, lose track of it, and only grab a new one when the old one is truly gone. Cups get claimed and defended. Napkins get taken two and three at a time, used on a single wing, and thrown away. A 16 count package sounds like plenty until you watch how buffalo sauce behaves.
If you buy an extra package of exactly one thing, make it napkins.
Skip the centerpiece
Centerpieces belong on tables where people sit facing each other. Nobody at a watch party faces the table. Everyone's oriented toward the screen, and whatever you put in the middle of the food spread gets shoved sideways to make room for a slow cooker within the first ten minutes.
Put that effort on a wall instead. Something behind the TV or above the snack table is in everyone's line of sight all afternoon and never gets moved.
So the shape of the order comes out like this. One table cover. One banner. Napkins in the largest quantity you're willing to store. Plates and cups sized for your optimistic number, not your realistic one. One team accent if you're confident about the room.
That order survives five guests and it survives fourteen, and neither outcome requires a second trip anywhere.
Have a look through the NFL party supplies collection and build out from there. New customers get 10% off with code PARTY10.