The FFPC Playoff Challenge is back again for 2024. Whether you are a veteran of the competition, or completely new to it, the information contained in our annually updated overview and strategy article can be a foundational piece of your research for this year’s competition.

1) Overview

You can go to the FFPC Playoff challenge overview HERE for complete rules, but here are the highlights:
Create a roster of 12 Players. There is no draft. Simply select your roster as described below. This will be your roster for the entire duration of the contest. Contest runs from the first week of the NFL playoffs thru the Super Bowl. Each week’s score will be added to your team’s total which will accumulate for the duration of the contest. Super Bowl points will count as DOUBLE the points toward each team’s total.

1-QB
2-RB
2-WR
1-TE
4-Flex (RB, WR or TE)
1-K
1-D

•  ONLY ONE PLAYER PER NFL TEAM -> Your lineup will consist of 12 players from the 14 playoff teams. (Which two teams do you fade?) The software will enforce this when you create your lineups
• Scoring is FFPC format (PPR w/ a 1.5 PPR TE premium)
• Final Rosters must be submitted before kickoff of the first playoff game January 11, 2025 at 1:00pm ET

Similar to 2023, there are two versions of this contest, distinguished by their entry fee. The flagship “FFPC” Playoff Challenge version carries a $200 entry fee per team with a grand prize of $500,000. The $35 version of the contest, with that lower entry fee, has a grand prize of $100,000. Note, however, the number of teams you will be competing against is twice as large in the $35 format as the $200 one. The table below compares the two versions of the contest side by side. The contest size and prize structure is nearly identical to what it was in 2023, with the exception of the $200 entry contest now being capped at 7,500 teams, versus 7,800 in 2023.

2) Historical Results – Go HERE

This will show player ownership and points scored for 2023 playoffs, as well as links to spreadsheets that SHOW ALL OF LAST YEAR’S 2023 TEAMS IN ORDER OF FINISH .

Strategies:

• Roster players from teams you project to play many games and score the most points.  Points from Super Bowl participants are DOUBLED. (Hint: This is important).
• Roster uniqueness is paramount. The top winners historically have unique rosters. Chopping the pot with multiple people can be an anti-climactic finish to an otherwise successful outcome.
• The Perfect 2023 Roster compared with the Winning 2023 Roster reinforces the theme of uniqueness, and it is a trend seen the past 5 years. Winning teams (and perfect ones) will ultimately roster players with lower ownership percentages, but you need a fine balance of chalk top scorers to keep up with the pack in combination with a few sleepers that will separate you from the rest of the pool. Having dissected the winning rosters since this contest’s inception, we have identified roster patterns that essentially become a list of “Best Practices” when building lineups. These need to be combined with your process of actual player selection. To view this analysis and the 2023 Perfect Roster go HERE
• The cash line in these contests stand at the top 11.3% in the $200 entry version and just the top 1.8% for the $35 version. There are league credits beyond the cash prizes in the $35 version, which put the overall prize line at 11.25%. Take a multi entry, GPP mindset for this contest, and keep in mind that the $200 contest provides a better chance of returning an actual cash prize (versus credits) if that is important to you.

Make no mistake, these contests WILL SELL OUT.

People on the message boards express disappointment and displeasure when there are no spots left. Don’t be that guy. If you are going to play, grab your entries early and fill out the teams later. There are way too many #CantBelieveImissedOutBros on the boards who express grief that they missed out when they literally had weeks to reserve the entries. “Snooze, you lose”

3)How many entries do I need to succeed?

In either format ($35/$200 entry), the maximum number of entries is 150. Let’s look at some facts around entries from the 2023 competition, and let you decide.

$35 Entry

• In the $35 Tourney, 1 team maxed out with 150 entries. (The next highest entrant had 84 entries). The max entry player did incredibly well. They had total entry fees of $5,250, but netted $28,290 in prizes. The bulk of that came from finishes of 5th ($10,000), 8th ($7,500), and 14th ($2,500). When looking into all the rosters of this player, it appears they strictly followed one of the cardinal principles of our roster construction best practices, reinforcing the results of following them.
• The overall winner finished 1st ($100,000) AND 2nd ($50,000) with just 11 entries total.
• The team that finished 3rd in the $35 format (for $25,000) had 27 entries total.
• Do you need multiple entries to be a big winner? Obviously the more bullets the better, so long as you have thoughtfully created your lineups. Don’t just flood the tourney with random lineups and see what sticks. But as seen, you can also take down some of the top prizes with a more meager set of teams (per the 11 teams that took down 1st and 2nd) .

Here is a breakdown showing the number of teams entered by players in 2023. We see that 75% of all players competing in the 2023 $35 challenge entered just 1 or 2 teams.

$200 Entry

• In the 2023 $200 FFPC Tourney, two teams max entered the contest. 150 teams translated to $30,000 in entry fees. Neither team broke even in this endeavor. One team totaled $23,850 in prizes (with a top finish of 39th overall), and the other totaled $14,850 (with a top finish of 44th overall).
• The overall winner of the $500,000 had entered 90 teams. Note that this team owner was the same person who won the 2023 FFPC Best Ball tourney for $200,000, so essentially they were able to free roll their 90 teams and turn their $200,000 into $700,000+.
• The team that placed 2nd in the $200 tourney, and won $100,000, was THE SAME OWNER who won 1st and 2nd in the $35 tourney, for a total of $250,000. They entered 6 teams into the $200 tourney (in addition to their 11 $35 teams that ended up 1st and 2nd in that one). Their top lineup in each contest was identical except for their Cleveland Browns player selected. They played David Njoku on their first place team in the $35 contest (who scored 19.8 pts), but Amari Cooper (who scored 9.9 pts) on their 2nd place team in the $200 contest. Had they duplicated lineups across contests, they would have come away with an additional $200,000. In that scenario they had the same lineup as the $500,000 winning 1st place team and would have split the total of the $500,000 1st and $100,000 2nd place prizes ($600,000 / 2 = $300,000).

4) A framework for building your team for 2024 – Go HERE

Many players have their own process, but if you are new to this contest, you may want to consider the process we have outlined. These “Best Practices” are based on institutional knowledge of this contest, built up over years of analyzing the winning rosters that have had success in the tournament.