There’s one thing I can confidently say - there is no better tournament name in the fantasy football space than the Big Gorilla. And I can also confidently say that it’s one of the best fantasy football contests out there. The FFPC is one of the most well-respected platforms in the industry, where winners of their contests have gold-plated names in our space. This contest also offers high stakes without having to pony up thousands of dollars in entry fees (which they also offer, if you want to go BIG with contests like their Main Event or High Society drafts). With this one, you can win a major resume-building contest and $1M prize with a $350 entry.

Not just that, but they offer some bonus incentives to join as well. First off, if it’s your first time playing, you can use promo code ALARM at myffpc.com, and they’ll give you $25 when you deposit $35 or more. With the Big Gorilla, you can get a discount on the entry fee by buying three teams for $1,000, which saves you $50. They also have their Seven Bananas promo going now, where you could win additional entries and prizes just by getting pick number 7 in consecutive contests - the graphic below has the prizes, and the full details can be found on the Rules Page.


 


 

Today, I’m going to take a moment to share some advice on competing in a contest like the Big Gorilla. And on this week’s Alarm Fantasy Football, Howard Bender and I will actually be drafting a Big Gorilla team, so you can see some of these tips in action! Make sure you are subscribed to the Fantasy Alarm YouTube Channel so you never miss any of the action!

 

 

 

Understanding the FFPC Big Gorilla Tournament Format

For any paid contest you are joining, you really should read the full rules. They aren’t that long, and there are some key details others may miss. The Big Gorilla isn’t set up like your home league because it’s a big tournament with upwards of 17,700 people in it. And the scoring at FFPC might be different, too.

For starters, the regular season for the Big Gorilla ends in Week 12. You play a normal head-to-head schedule where you set a lineup each week with two FAAB waivers on Wednesday and Sunday. After Week 12, you then have two weeks of league playoffs in Weeks 13-14 before the three-week Championship Round in Weeks 15-17. Here is how that works.

League Playoffs (Weeks 13-14)

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

Seeds 1 and 2 actually automatically advance to the next round, regardless of league playoff outcome. Head-to-head matchups in Weeks 13 and 14 decide the League Champion, who also gets a berth in the Championship Round.

The League Champion and the 2nd-place finisher of the league playoffs also get prizes. First place gets a custom award medal plus their choice of the following three prizes, while 2nd place gets $500.

  • $1,500 Cash
  • (1) Free Entry into FFPC Main Event ($2,200 Value)
  • (5) Free Entries into Big Gorilla ($1,700 value) 

So, if things break just right, there is a world where all four playoff seeds walk away with something. Seeds 1 and 2 automatically advance to the next round. If Seeds 3 and 4 win in Week 13, they both also win prizes, with one of them advancing. If you advance to the playoffs, your odds of coming home with a prize are pretty good.

Championship Round (Weeks 15-17)

In this stage, there are no head-to-head matchups. All remaining teams are in one big pod. Your score is your total score of Weeks 15, 16, and 17 plus your one-week average score from the regular season. Whoever has the highest point total in this round is the Big Gorilla Champion.

Week One FFPC Caveat

This is something cool that the FFPC does to allow for live drafts right up until the Saturday of Week One in Las Vegas. Regardless of when you draft your Big Gorilla team, you actually get a “free look” at any games on Thursday and Friday of Week One. That allows teams to draft live and set their lineups retroactively without penalizing the teams that drafted before. If you want to go out to the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, you can draft live on Saturday and potentially get a big discount (or avoid landmines) from the Thursday and Friday games!

 

 


 

Understanding the FFPC Big Gorilla Positions and Scoring

The positional lineups for this one are pretty standard. It’s a 20-round snake draft where you are drafting the following spots. They have both fast drafts (60-second clocks) and slow drafts (1-hour, 2-hour, and 5-hour timers with overnight pauses from 2-8 AM ET). 

  • QB: 1
  • RB: 2
  • WR: 2
  • TE: 1
  • Flex (RB, WR, TE): 2
  • K: 1
  • DST: 1

It’s typical FFPC scoring but FFPC scoring actually is not typical for most leagues for one reason - it’s “tight end premium”. What that means is that all positions are 1 point per reception, except tight end, where you get 1.5 points. The full scoring can be found here, but that is the one difference that really moves the needle vs. other platforms. 

Big Gorilla Quarterback Strategy

For these sections, we used info from our friends over at FantasyMojo to look at some of the best-performing teams from last year to see what kind of strategy and trends performed best, to then combine that with our knowledge of the current landscape. And the quarterback position, as always in big contests, proved to be crucial.

With 20 rounds, you may be tempted to potentially draft two quarterbacks with meaningful picks. But that wasn’t really the case with teams that performed well. You basically had two types of teams that finished top 10. Teams that drafted a high-end quarterback (Joe Burrow, Josh Allen, Lamar Jackson, Brock Purdy, etc). Or teams that got a discount on a breakout, namely, Jayden Daniels or Baker Mayfield. In fact, Baker Mayfield was one of the highest-rostered players among these teams. The team that won got him with their 20th-round pick, while a couple of the top 10 teams added him off waivers. You need to find a path to elite upside early or late, but doubling up on expensive QBs does not seem to be the way. 

Big Gorilla Running Back Strategy

You only technically need to start 2 running backs, and the user who won the whole contest, Macher22, proved that in a big way. They took Saquon Barkley in the second round and Aaron Jones in the 6th round, then most of their other RB picks (Jaylen Warren, Raheem Mostert, Ezekiel Elliott, Marshawn Lloyd, and Will Shipley) did next to nothing or actually nothing. And the interesting part is that they did not make major additions via waivers. Their final roster had Barkley, Jones, Monster, Warren, Cam Akers, and Emmanuel Wilson, with Barkley and Jones starting. So you can run pretty thin at the position.

The good news is that there wasn’t really one “skeleton key” combination that you had to have to go far. The only RB to appear on more than three of the top 12 teams was Jahmyr Gibbs (6), which makes sense as he was the top scorer for the format as well as Weeks 15-17. After that, there were naturally teams with guys like Saquon Barkley, Derrick Henry, and Josh Jacobs, as well as some key later hits like James Conner and Chuba Hubbard. I was surprised that, for a league with waivers, Bucky Irving was only rostered by one of the top teams.

Last year, drafting RB early certainly paid off. You might be looking to lean into that, but we did see more RBs stay healthy and more WRs get hurt than we typically see. For me, I’m sticking with taking “best player available” in the early rounds and not forcing any particular strategy early. If we have to pivot to Zero RB or Yin & Yang TE or something, we’ll do it. 

 

 


 

Big Gorilla Wide Receiver Strategy

Naturally, given the format of the tournament, the top teams were loaded with the wide receivers that scored the most points over the back half of the season, especially Weeks 15, 16, and 17 in the championship round. The names that appeared most often were in the top 5-7, like Brian Thomas Jr, Mike Evans, Davante Adams, and Tee Higgins. It’s a little surprising at first that Ja'Marr Chase was only on one team in the top 12, but he actually wasn’t a WR1 in PPR over those three weeks.

The truth, though, is we really can’t predict in advance who will be good during those stretches. Rookies generally start slow and can provide big value vs. ADP when they hit, so that’s never a bad bet. Volume is obviously key in a full PPR format, so I’m going after guys who can be a top two target on their team. 

Big Gorilla Tight End Strategy

As you would expect, many of the top teams had guys like Brock Bowers and George Kittle. One thing that surprised me is that none of the top 12 teams had Trey McBride. In fact, only one of the teams had any of the tight ends that went within the first five tight ends off the board, and that was a Sam LaPorta team that also had Brock Bowers. 

I recently wrote an article with my take on positional scarcity at the tight end position. And the concept is simple. Travis Kelce has really been the only highly drafted tight end to pan out in that same season in recent years. If you are drafting Brock Bowers or Trey McBride where they go in FFPC, you are expecting them to have a top 10-15 all-time season at the tight end position. That’s what it takes when you draft a tight end in the first round. It’s entirely possible, but I generally prefer to use the tight end premium to my advantage.

One thing games often forget is that the tight end premium scoring does not affect all tight ends evenly. It only affects the receptions, not the yards and touchdowns. So guys like Sam LaPorta, Mark Andrews, or Tucker Kraft that relied on big plays or TDs did not get the boost like Brock Bowers did, given his target volume. Keep that in mind when deciding who to go after.  

 

 


 

Big Gorilla Kicker And DST Strategy

When reviewing the top teams from last year’s draft, one trend becomes fairly clear. None of the top 10 teams drafted a defense or kicker before round 15. Now, that doesn’t mean none of them took the first kicker or defense off the board - they just didn’t do it until AT LEAST round 15. Some of them drafted their kicker and defense over the last three rounds or even with their last two picks. And none of them drafted more than one kicker or defense. So it may be tempting to get the “best player at a position”. But historically, it’s not even that easy to predict. So we’ll stick to waiting.