Week 18 is over. Seasonal fantasy football is finished, and we get a bit of a breather before free agency rumors start swirling again in March. At least, that’s for normal, well-adjusted people. Some people take breaks, go on vacation, work, and so forth.

For the degenerates like myself and possibly you who are reading this, you want more. There’s more fantasy football goodness to be had, and you’re in luck. We’ve got you covered here because PLAYOFF fantasy football is just around the corner!

The FFPC (and Footballguys) Playoff Challenge has the luxury of no snake drafts, no auctions, no huge time sink setting lineups, and no perusing waiver wires. NONE of that. Instead, you select 12 players, and that’s it. From Super Wild Card Weekend to the Super Bowl, your team is your team. The ride begins Saturday afternoon when the Seahawks and 49ers kick off, and we’re off to the races.

If you’re new to the format, I’ll give you the ins and outs here as there are two different contests at a $35 and $200 price point.

The FFPC Playoff Challenge Format and Scoring

For this FFPC Playoff Challenge, you’ll select 12 players to make up your roster for the entire NFL playoffs.

“But Kevin, there are 14 teams in the playoffs!”

There are, but for the purposes of this challenge, you’ll be selecting one player from 12 NFL teams and completely fading TWO teams. So if you roster Travis Kelce from the Chiefs, you won’t be able to select Patrick Mahomes. If you choose Jalen Hurts from the Eagles, you won’t be able to select DeVonta Smith. You get the picture. The element of strategy comes into play with this contest.

Because we need a kicker and defense as well, I’ll be using the term “soft fade” for teams where we may not want to play their offensive players but putting them at kicker or defense/special teams makes more sense. Think of teams like Seattle, Jacksonville, and the New York Giants as the most prominent soft fade candidates of the playoff teams.

For the scoring, the rules are typical FFPC rules, which mean the following:

  • TE (Tight end) premium scoring (1.5 points per reception)
  • 4 point passing touchdowns
  • 1 point per 20 passing yards
  • 3 points per field goal plus 0.1 points for every yard thereafter

Your 12-player lineup will include the following:

  • (1) Quarterback
  • (2) Running Back
  • (2) Wide Receiver
  • (1) Tight End
  • (4) FLEX players (RB/WR/TE)
  • (1) Kicker
  • (1) Defense/Special Teams

Aside from the scoring wrinkles and the positional elements, if you have players that are playing in the Super Bowl, they will score DOUBLE points.

Planning Out Your Roster

First, you should map out what you think will happen in the playoffs — predicting game by game, thinking about the scenarios that could play out and then tailoring your roster to that. Tell yourself a story of the NFL playoffs, as I would say. 

Do the Bills make a four-game run to the Super Bowl? Josh Allen will be a trendy and heavily-rostered pick among quarterbacks if you’re betting on the Bills to play four games, but the field will heavily roster him.

In last year’s FFPC Playoff Challenge, I finished 181st out of over 14,000 teams and was the overall leader after the Wild Card round. 

I fully faded the Cardinals and Patriots, who only played one game. Likewise, I soft-faded the Titans and Raiders, who played only one game. Being able to predict the playoffs, future matchups and then selecting your players based on predicted game scripts will go a LONG way toward separating yourself from the field. After that, game theory and player selection will separate the wheat from the chaff.

You WILL be selecting players that only play one game. If teams play four games, including the Super Bowl, you want to identify those teams and not fully fade them. Last year, both the Rams and Bengals played four games. The Packers and Titans had first-round byes and lost in the Divisional Round, so they only played one game.

You also want to be mindful of these matchups from a fade perspective. Fading both teams in a matchup means you’re not going to have a skill-position player from a team that plays two or more games. So, for example, say you’re fading the Giants in this contest. That means you should be bringing a skill-position player from the Vikings because if that scenario plays out, you’re now getting two games and getting a leg up on anybody who brought, say Saquon Barkley onto their rosters.

Conversely, if the Giants are poised to make a big playoff run, Barkley will likely be the main cog in their wins from a fantasy points perspective. 

These are the things you must weigh when constructing your roster.

The Game Theory of the FFPC Playoff Challenge 

There’s a significant edge for making key leverage plays and pivots for teams, just like in DFS. Stefon Diggs was the most-rostered played on Buffalo, who only played two games. Because of that, I selected Devin Singletary to be different from the rest of the field. Even on teams where there were elite players like the Chiefs, Kelce (thanks to the tight end premium scoring format) was 55% rostered, so a 25% Mahomes or 15% rostered Tyreek Hill felt like super advantageous leverage plays versus the field.

Singletary was different but at virtually the same rostership (21% of the field in both price points) as Josh Allen but Allen was the optimal play thanks to his blowup game against the Chiefs. As a result, Allen was the quarterback on the top 48 teams who cashed in the $200 contest and in the top 40 teams in the $35 contest. You must consider this DFS twist when choosing your players, but you can’t be so wildly different that you’re hampering your ability to score.

Cooper Kupp was selected in a whopping 91% of teams across both contests, but that was because of a lack of other rosterable options across the Rams. That perfect storm led to near-universal rostership. So he was the chalk play you needed to win.

Player selection, along with being different and unique, is one of the biggest keys to success in this Playoff Challenge, and we’ll be getting into that later this week as I dive into team-by-team breakdowns. I’ll also provide an example lineup with my thought process on who and WHY I selected them. Stay tuned, #FAmily!

*thanks to fantasymojo.com for all rostership percentages from the 2021 FFPC Playoff Challenge*

 

 


Check out our list of the best, and most trusted sports betting and fantasy sports promo codes from the top legal sites in your state.

Related Articles and Tools: