2025 FFPC Playoff Challenge Strategy
Finding the narrow way through...
The phrase that comes to mind when thinking through the FFPC Playoff Challenge is elegant simplicity. Or simple chaos. One of the two. Point being, the contest appears oh-so-simple, as you just have to pick one player from 12 of the 14 playoff teams, and fill out a roster.1 The scoring is pretty typical, with cumulative + PPR/TE-premium, and with the Super Bowl counting double.
Sound simple? It is, but...
It also includes an extremely the top-heavy prize structure that strongly incentivizes us to avoid duplicating lineups with our opponents. In the $200 FFPC Playoff Challenge, a whopping 36% goes to first place, and in the $35 version, it’s still top-heavy, with 21% dedicated to first. So, if all of the money, is at the very peak, how does that impact our team building?
In short, if we want to win first by ourselves, we can’t simply play the most likely outcome.
For this year, the most likely outcomes start off very obvious. Almost everyone entering this contest is aware that the Ravens and Bills are heavy round one favorites, and two of the strongest AFC bets to go to the Super Bowl. Because of that, both the Steelers and the Broncos will almost certainly be faded at one of the highest rates, while Josh Allen, James Cook, Lamar Jackson, and Derrick Henry will be played on almost all of the Bills/Ravens teams. If you decide that you also want to fade the Steelers + Broncos and play the chalk Ravens + Bills, you’ve now reduced your potential leverage down to your other 8 roster spots.2
If you do the same on the NFC side, and play the chalk Saquon Barkley and Jahmyr Gibbs, then you’ve suddenly already locked in half of your lineup as the chalkiest pieces from each team. While it’s possible to find leverage in your remaining places, the core pieces of your team have already locked you in to a build that every casual NFL fan would select.
So, if we can’t simply play the most likely scenario and win first by ourselves, what do we do? In short, we need to find the narrow way through. We need to construct a team (or teams) that has a plausible path to winning first place without being duplicated. Let’s dive in on how we do that.
Developing a strategy
When building a team, I rely on these five core elements:
Identify the chalk and leverage for each individual team
Identify players/teams to bet on
Identify a plausible path for those players/teams
Analyze how that path affects other teams
Build the team and ask yourself if it has a plausible path of winning first place
With this strategy in place, let’s look at how we execute it.
Executing the strategy
For the first two elements, we need to know both the points projections for each player, and the ownership projections for each player. For me, I usually use ETR for the points projections and Legendary Upside for the ownership projections, but for most teams, it’s often quite easy to get a good feel for it without them.3 4 Once you have a good feel for this, it’s time to move on to element #3, identify a plausible path for those players/teams.
For the plausible path portion, the free playoff predictor from Pro Football Network is ideal. It lets you choose the winners of each round, and automatically re-seeds the teams for you. So, for example, if you wanted to bet heavily on the Vikings to advance to the Super Bowl (though I can almost certainly assure you this will be a painful experience), then this tool will help you identify a path for that to occur, as you see below.
We then can shape our Vikings player selection off of this path. In this case, our Vikings player would likely be Justin Jefferson or Sam Darnold, as we know the Vikings are playing four games, and Jefferson/Darnold are heavy favorites to score the most points in that scenario.5 After that, it’s time to move to element #4, analyze how that path affects other teams.
In this case, we know the Vikings are beating the Rams in round one, so we likely should fade or soft fade the Rams.6 We also know that it is less likely that either:
The Lions play less games than expected (by losing to the Vikings in round two)
And/or the Eagles lose in round one (which would enable the Vikings to get a much easier opponent in the Bucs/Commanders in round two, and therefore makes our plausible “Vikings advance to the Super Bowl” path more likely).
Because we “know” the Vikings are advancing to the Super Bowl, and one of or both of the Eagles/Lions are likely to play less games than expectation, we should consider fading/leveraging against those teams and their chalk pieces. Since we didn’t make the all-in bet on the Vikings with Sam Darnold, I’ll elect to use double leverage now, by playing A.J. Brown instead of Saquon and ARSB instead of Jahmyr Gibbs. I’ve now selected this core group of players, solely based on my decision to bet on the Vikings to advance to the Super Bowl.
Justin Jefferson, A.J. Brown, ARSB, with a fade on the Rams
With this core path developed, it’s time to move to element #5, build the (rest of) team and ask yourself if it has a plausible path of winning first place.
With our selection of the chalky Justin Jefferson, our leverage comes from the selection of A.J. Brown and ARSB, instead of the chalkier Saquon Barkley and Jahmyr Gibbs. Given that, the follow-on bet is that the Packers upset the Eagles, leading us to select Josh Jacobs as the Packers highest projected player. With the Lions-Packers now a lock to play in round two, the Vikings will face the winner of Commanders/Bucs, and with a tight three point spread, I’m content to play a skill player from each team here. So, with our NFC picks complete, our team looks like this:
From there, I’d select the rest of my team, which will include the quarterback of the AFC team that I’m projecting to play the Vikings the in Super Bowl, and follow a more chalk build the rest of the way, given how many leverage levers I’ve already pulled (no Saquon, no Gibbs, and a fade of Puka Nacua). On the AFC side, for this example, I’ll use the Ravens as the team advancing to the Super Bowl. Given we expect the Ravens to advance to the Super Bowl, the playoff predictor tool shows us that we’re slightly incentivized to bet against the Bills, given they are certain to face the Ravens round two if both teams win their first game.
In many cases, fading/soft fading the Bills would be the primary option here, as a Bills loss in round one means the Ravens round two matchup is much easier. However, the Bills round one opponent, Denver doesn’t have a great skill player option to bet on, so I prefer settling for a fade of Josh Allen by using James Cook and the Broncos defense, and trusting that my NFC leverage is already enough to differentiate me from my opponents.
For Texans-Chargers, I don’t need to take a large stand either way, so I’ll just follow the chalk, and bet on the Chargers to win as three point favorites, with a soft fade for the Texans. For the Chiefs, Travis Kelce is very likely to be chalk, and for good reason, as the TE premium scoring suits him well, and he fills out this team neatly at the TE spot.
This brings the final team to this:
In sum, executing our strategy created this team, with a core bet on a Vikings-Ravens Super Bowl, which led us to these follow-on bets:
A fade on each of their round one opponents, the Rams and Steelers.
Slight bets against the chalky players from their most likely round two opponents, which are the Bills, Lions, and Eagles, which sets us up to gain some leverage if those teams fail/get knocked out early.
A bet on the teams playing the Vikings/Ravens likely round two opponents in round one, which includes Josh Jacobs for the Packers and the Broncos defense.
We’re ambivalent about the result of Bucs-Commanders and Chargers-Texans, so we aren’t fading any of those teams, while also not trying to do anything fancy in those matchups. Similarly, we’re content with the Chiefs winning round two, as they can’t play the Ravens, and Travis Kelce is chalk at the TE spot.
Using the playoff predictor below, we can clearly see how a this team could finish near the top of the leaderboard by itself (though I would again note that the Vikings are maybe not the best team to bet on for playoff success).7
Final Thoughts
While this is just an example of one team, using the core elements when building teams will set you up for a better than expectation chance at finding the narrow way through and winning the 2025 FFPC Playoff Challenge.
Best of luck, and as always, thanks for reading!
1QB, 2RB, 2WR, 1TE, 4Flex (RB, WR, or TE), 1K, 1D - 2 complete fades of a team
I haven’t watched it yet, but I would imagine the Boomer Opto started with these four teams.
As previously mentioned, the Steelers/Broncos/Ravens/Bills projections are incredibly easy. We also know that Justin Jefferson and Puka Nacua will both be played at a high rate due to role as alpha WR1s on a tightly projected round one game. Saquon Barkley has been the best player in fantasy all season, Travis Kelce fits the format well and fills the TE spot, etc.
For those of you without access to the detailed projections but wanting more information, I’d encourage you to check out the Ship Chasing YouTube channel, where Pete, Pat, and the Rotoviz crew often discuss the majority of the Legendary Upside projections for free.
For most roster constructions, I usually want the QB of the team I’m projecting to win the Super Bowl, given that QB’s usually score the most points. In this case, selecting Sam Darnold and almost all of the other chalk might be fairly unique, given the Vikings low chances of advancing to the Super Bowl, and Darnold’s very low ownership. However, Justin Jefferson is the rare non-QB able to play 3+ games and be close to projecting to score the most for his team. This ceiling coupled with the flexibility he provides (where our team is’t dead if Vikings only play a game or two) is hard to replicate.
I will note that in some cases/teams, I would be willing to still play a chalk Puka Nacua here, given his strong point projection advantage over his teammates, the Vikings dead last ranking vs WR fantasy scoring, and a likely more-pass happy Rams attack if they are losing to the Vikings. But, this would be the exception to the normal guideline, which is to fade/soft fade a round one team you have losing.
Though I’m not 100% sure this team will be unique, I’d guess there are very few teams that are avoiding both chalk Gibbs and chalk Saquon.