Draft season is here and bigger than ever with a plethora of platforms and options available to choose from. FFPC is one of the longest-running and best platforms for playing fantasy football, with a host of offerings from traditional best ball to Superflex tournaments and guillotine leagues as well as the popular high-stakes Main Event contest along with the new FantasyPros Championship with a top prize of $1,000,000 for first place.
One of the most significant advantages we can give ourselves in fantasy football is to understand the key differences between different platforms. FFPC is a full PPR format, with tight end premium scoring, meaning the position scores an extra 0.5 PPR points per reception over other positions, meaning each catch for a tight end is worth 1.5 PPR points plus the yardage gained on the catch. This naturally drives up the value of the position and makes it a position where it can be better to secure a top option than play the late-round lottery.
FFPC Roster Construction & Draft Strategy
As we can see in these charts below, on FFPC tight ends make up a slightly larger portion of both the top 100 and top 50 points scorers when we exclude quarterbacks. The fact that we don’t see a huge increase when looking at FFPC scoring is a reminder that tight end scoring can be difficult to predict and while the elite tight ends like Travis Kelce and Mark Andrews are worthy of their high ADP, chasing touchdown dependant low volume players isn’t going to yield great returns.
Contest Overview
This contest is a managed contest, meaning you will set your lineups each week along with making waiver claims and facing weekly head-to-head matchups. Each draft takes place against eleven other teams, either as a fast draft with 60 seconds per pick, or a slow draft with either two or six hours per pick and the clock switched off between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. (EST). Drafts are open now and will stay open until either 20,004 teams are drafted or until the kick-off of the first Sunday of games starts.
The unique factor in FFPC contests is that they still have drafts going on after the first game is played on the opening Thursday night.
“FantasyPros Championship drafts are scheduled before and after Week 1 Opening Game on Thursday. All teams, whether drafting before or after NFL Week 1 opening game on Thursday, will be able to submit and edit their starting lineup after Thursday’s game, including start/bench players which played in Thursday’s game. To confirm, all FPC teams will have the same choice on whether to start or sit Thursday players retroactively after they have watched that game. Fantasy stats for Thursday’s players will count towards Week 1 scores if they are placed in the starting lineup. This is exclusive to Week 1. Starting in Week 2, players must be inserted into the starting lineup prior to the start of their games.”
Another tweak to scoring that the FFPC FantasyPros Championship boasts is ‘Action Scoring’
“Action’ Scoring – All offensive players will receive points if they score a TD, whether by punt/kickoff return, playing defense, from a fumble recovery, etc. We feel it is fair to reward the fantasy owner that has that player. If your player scores a TD, you get the points!”
This is a break from the norm where players could return a punt or kick-off for a touchdown; frustratingly for fantasy managers, you would get nothing as they were taking part in a special teams play.
Tournament Format
After the initial 12-team draft, the majority of the fantasy season will be played out amongst this league, with head-to-head matchups randomly assigned for each week.
“3 Parts to the FPC season – the FPC format was created to form 3 distinct and separate parts of the overall season. Teams have an opportunity to win prizes for succeeding in each of the three:
Part 1 – Regular season Weeks 1-12
Part 2 – League Playoffs Weeks 13 & 14
Part 3 – Championship Round and Consolation Round Weeks 15-17″
Unlike many other formats, the FantasyPros Championship advances to the playoffs after 12 weeks, which gives each team the chance to play each one time as well as an additional week where points are handled differently, which takes place in Week 6.
“Week 6 All Play – The FantasyPros Championship consists of 12 regular season weeks. Each team plays every team in the league one time during the regular season. Week 6 is an all play week. This means that there are no H2H matchups in Week 6, rather it is a full league total points battle. The top six scorers get a Win and the bottom six scorers get a Loss. Any team(s) tied for sixth most points scored in week 6 is awarded a Win.”
There is something to be said for making sure you will be able to roster a good lineup for Week 6, ideally without a lot of players on bye weeks but it isn’t worth fading good players simply because they end up with a Week 6 bye week.
The top two teams after twelve weeks will automatically secure their places in the championship round, but there are more fun nuances to be had.
“After Week 12, League Playoff standings will be decided as such:
Seed 1) Team with best regular season Record
Seed 2) Team with highest point total
Seed 3) The remaining team with the best regular season record
Seed 4) The remaining team with the highest point total”
All four of those teams will battle it out during Weeks 13-14 for the league prizes on offer, which include cash prizes of $1500 for first place and $500 for second place, along with alternatives including entries to other FFPC contests in 2024. This allows, in theory, both the first and second-place teams to secure profit before the championship round or the third or fourth-place team a chance to make some money and advance to the championship round.
During Weeks 15-17, the team in the Championship Round with the highest sum of total points scored from Week 15-17 added to their one-game point average from the regular season is the FantasyPros Champion and takes home a cool one million dollars. The full list of prizes is below.
Roster Construction
Having established that tight ends are slightly more important in this format, let us take a look at how the rest of your roster will be constructed.
Starting Lineup:
1-QB
2-RB
2-WR
1-TE
2-Flex
1-K
1-D
Unlike many platforms where kicker and defense are slowly being faded out, they remain a firm part of the season-long managed contests on FFPC, and it is a requirement to draft at least one of each in your draft. The flex position can be occupied by running backs, wide receivers, or tight ends, which does lead some drafters to try the ‘Bully TE’ approach with two elite tight ends. Historically speaking, the more reliable route has been to rely on wide receivers or running backs for the flex position, so taking plenty of shots at those positions is worthwhile.
League Transactions
Unlike many regular fantasy leagues, the FantasyPros Championship has no trades, meaning that the waiver periods are even more important to the hopes of your team. Waivers are handled via blind bidding FAAB, with each team having $1000 FAAB to spend on waiver bids for the entire season. It’s important to consider how you will use this budget, as teams making it to the playoffs will have access to waivers in that period as well, and when you run out of FAAB, you have no way to add players. There is no post-waiver free agency like in traditional leagues. Once again, managing your waiver budget is important, and leaving even a small amount for the playoffs is highly advisable.
For leagues that draft early, there will be two pre-season opportunities to add players.
“Two (2) ‘pre-season’ free agency processes: The first is scheduled for Wednesday, September 6 at 10 PM ET for any FPC league which draft concludes prior to this Wednesday. The second is scheduled on the following Sunday, September 10 at 10 AM ET for any FPC league which draft concludes prior to this Sunday.”
As always, FantasyPros will have you covered for all the strategies that you need during the offseason. Our Waivers articles and Rankings during the season will help guide you to the championship. To get a feel for how FantasyPros Championship drafts will look, you can head over to our Mock Draft Simulator and replicate the settings to get instant analysis on every pick you think through.
Full Prizes
A full list can be found here, and the details of the top cash prizes are below.
| CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND (WEEKS 15-17) | |||
| Place | Prize | ||
| 1st – Overall Champion | $1,000,000 | 16th | $4,000 |
| 2nd | $200,000 | 17th | $3,000 |
| 3rd | $75,000 | 18th | $3,000 |
| 4th | $25,000 | 19th | $3,000 |
| 5th | $15,000 | 20th | $3,000 |
| 6th | $10,000 | 21st | $2,000 |
| 7th | $10,000 | 22nd | $2,000 |
| 8th | $10,000 | 23rd | $2,000 |
| 9th | $9,000 | 24th | $2,000 |
| 10th | $8,000 | 25th | $2,000 |
| 11th | $6,000 | 26th | $2,000 |
| 12th | $5,000 | 27th | $2,000 |
| 13th | $5,000 | 28th | $2,000 |
| 14th | $5,000 | 29th | $2,000 |
| 15th | $4,000 | 30th | $2,000 |
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