It is Playoff season when it comes to the National Fantasy competitions. If you aren’t currently competing in these national competitions, you are missing out on one of the most fun and possibly most profitable aspects of Season-Long Fantasy Football. We are going to be looking at the “Mini Majors.” These are national competitions with overall prize pools ranging from $150,000-$500,000 for modest buy-ins of $200-$350. It is a price point that nearly anyone can afford when you factor in it is almost six months of competition and entertainment. Lastly, but most importantly, we get thoughts and comments from arguably the greatest season-long fantasy player on the planet none other than the owner of Cocktails and Dreams, Chad Schroeder.
The “Mini Majors”
There are five main Mini Major Competitions that all follow a relatively similar format. We also don’t want to neglect to mention the “Main Events,” which are also National Fantasy Competitions that have buy-ins ranging anywhere from $2k-$10k that have similar structures, but that will be a topic for another day. The most known of the Mini Majors is from the Fantasy Football Players Championship (FFPC). Their competition is known as the Football Guys Players Championship (FPC). There is a $350 entry fee, but you can get a discount if you buy a 3 pack for $1000.
First place in the overall competition for the FPC is a whopping $500,000. For winning your 12 team league you can take $1500 in cash or run it back next year for a 5 pack of FPC Teams or One main event entry worth $2000.
Two of the other Mini Majors are on RTSports.com. They host The Fantasy Championship (TFC) cobranded with myfantasyleague. There is a $300,000 first place prize in the TFC. RTSports also hosts the Real-Time Fantasy Championship (RTFC), which offers a smaller more winnable contest with $10,000 to first place. Both Competitions have $250 buy-ins ($50 3 pack discount) and payout $1000 for first and $500 for finishing second in the 12 man leagues.
Payout structure for 2021 FFPC -> FPC, RTSports -> TFC and NFFC -> RWOC Contests
The National Fantasy Football Championship (NFFC) Offers their Rotowire Online Championship (OC) at the same price point as the FPC and it has a top prize of $200,000.
League prizes in the OC are $1,500 for first and $700 for second place. The trade-off for the higher in-season payout is they only pay 40 places in the Overall Competition portion. Lastly, the Fantasy Football World Championships (FFWC) has a $50,000 first-place prize with a $299 buy-in. They offer a slight variation in league payouts where you get $200 for the best record and $200 for the most points in the regular season of your 12 man league along with $1300 cash or a Main event seat (valued at $1795) for being the League Champion and $300 for the runner up.
Format
Overall, these all share a common format of being a traditional Season-Long League with 12 teams. It pays out winners as described above, but is a shorter season to allow for the overall competition. Generally, you play each team once. There may also be all-play weeks to fill out the season. There are slight differences in roster compositions that do matter and may ultimately decide where you want to play. These are all PPR, 1 QB Leagues with Flex, K, and D/ST. The FPC has two Flex positions and tight end premium scoring. On RTSports they do traditional scoring with two Flex spots in the TFC but only one flex in the RTFC. The NFFC has three starting WRs and one Flex. Lastly, the FFWC has three WRs plus two Flex spots, so if you like to play a deep format, this is the one for you.
Playoffs
All but one of the competitions has four playoff teams. Playoff and qualifying teams are decided by an alternating best record, most points, best record, most points format. This allows for the excitement of head-to-head play while protecting great teams from having bad luck with matchups. The NFFC’s contest doesn’t have traditional playoffs. The team with the best record and most wins qualify for the overall competition in their format. In the other formats, there is a traditional four-team playoff. After that, all league champions qualify to move on to the overall competition. Other qualifiers are usually a team that has either the best record or the most points in their league’s regular season. Most of the overall competitions take place from Weeks 15-17. Starting with their season average, whoever scores the most total points in this timeframe will become the overall champion.
You Can Compete In These Contests
As a PlayerProfiler.com reader, and hopefully subscriber, you are uniquely positioned to be successful in these leagues. It may be intimidating at first to join in with the big boys (and girls), but remember, you have access to some of the best season-long rankings in the world. The draft kit has everything you need to prepare for a successful draft against anyone in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ibHPbSSPW4
The weekly waiver wire content both written and podcast form will keep you making the moves you need to all season to remain not only competitive, but contending for the league titles.
Lastly what gives you an edge over 90-percent of the field is access to some of the best data in the industry. Leverage PlayerProfiler’s advanced stats to find the best sleepers, breakout players, and waiver wire gems. That’s what I personally use to fuel nearly every decision I make.
From drafting, to waivers, to weekly lineup decisions. Everything is rooted in playerprofiler’s treasure trove of data.
Thoughts from the GOAT
Chad Schroeder is arguably the best season-long fantasy player in the world. He has over $2 million in net winnings and over 25 wins in these types of contests! Luckily, we were able to get a few thoughts from Chad about these contests and some of his teams. According to Chad, RTSports contests have the best payouts in the industry. Based on three-pack pricing, the contest pays 89-percent back to the players and is “Unmatched in the industry for similar contests.” Unfortunately, the Fantasy Football PLAYERS Championship, FPC, pays out a “dastardly” 74.1-percent. For being the biggest and most prominent competition out there, it would be nice to see a higher percentage go back to the players. The NFFC OC pays out 82.4-percent. Chad notes that it features 6-point Passing TDs, so make sure to pay attention to this when deciding where to draft your quarterbacks.
The other part of this contest that he likes is the Kentucky Derby System where you can attempt to pick your own draft position. Instead of the random draft order, there is a random order to PICK your draft slot.
It also features a third-round reversal. So there is legitimate thought to picking towards the end of the draft and overall makes the random draft slot system fairer. The FFWC pays out 79-percent, and aside from the 11 man starting rosters, is a “cookie-cutter scoring system that leads to cookie-cutter draft boards.”
Chad’s Regular Season Championshipship on RTSports
Just this season, Chad has accomplished an incredible feat. He has finished first overall in the regular-season points race in two of these contests. He finished first place in the regular season in RTSports TFC with this team:
Chad Schroeder’s first-place team in the 2021 TFC
Examing this team, you can see it is a deep roster. In the final week, he had both Mike Williams and Deebo Samuel on the bench. The team still managed to put up 185.15 points. He acquired Cordarrelle Patterson in Week 2 for $11 of the $1,000 budget, while other owners were blowing their load on a fourth-string RB from Baltimore who will remain nameless.
Another big takeaway I had from looking into this team was Chad was extremely active on the waiver wires. He was constantly picking up players on BOTH wavier runs (Wednesday/Friday). I think that Friday waiver is one a lot of casual players overlook.
Chad himself had this to say about this team: “Ekeler, Kittle, Kupp was a good start through four rounds of the draft. Gibson hasn’t been great, but he has done OK. Allen has been good at QB. Hitting big on Deebo really put this team in a good spot. Patterson is the whole key to this though. He provided RB1 numbers for 11 bucks off the wire (second run Friday night nonetheless). You simply never get something like that. Other decent moves included Van Jefferson for 63 bucks in Week 2. Dan Arnold was big for three bucks to replace Kittle while he was on IR. NE D/ST Week 11 for $28.”
Draft Board For Chad Schroeder’s “Cocktails & Dreams” Team in the 2021 TFC on RTSports.com
He drafted this team on August 16th, so if anyone tells you that you can’t win these contests if you don’t draft early in the summer and get some RB injury luck, they are wrong!
Chad’s NFFC Team
Chad also took first place in the regular season in the NFFC RWOC. The regular season doesn’t pay the huge 6-figure paydays that the championship does, but I believe it is probably the more challenging feat to accomplish. Anyone can get hot for a few weeks and take down the overall title. That is part of the appeal and why I would encourage all of you to play in these contests. There is no hiding over 12-14 weeks of the regular season though and we are calculating first place based on total points, so there was also no getting lucky in matchups. This is Chad’s OC First place team:
Chad Schroeder’s 2021 NFFC Rotowire OnlineChampionship Team
Again, a lot of depth here, but also you can see he suffered injuries just like anyone. He lost T.J. Hockenson and Antonio Brown for most of the season.
Chad’s comments on this team are: “Pretty much just hit on the draft here. Hill, Harris, Allen, Kupp, Thielen, Hockenson, A. Brown, Brady, Conner, Pollard is about all you could hope for through 10 picks.”
Draft Board From Chad Schroeders NFFC OC Contest. His Cocktails & Dreams is Team 9
He went on to say: “Last 10 almost all busts. Knox has been an awesome TE2 for two bucks and a key addition on the second run in Week 4. D’Ernest Johnson was huge in two different weeks, which helped get me by until James Conner had a full-time role.”
Final Takeaways
One of the biggest things I noticed when looking through Chad’s TFC team was that he used both waiver runs each week. He also commented on both teams about a key player he picked up on those second runs. That is a huge free nugget we got from the best fantasy football player in the world.
Pay attention to those second waiver runs. Keep hammering each and every waiver wire of the season from Week 1 until they lock you out and throw away the key.
For the contests themselves, there is no perfect format. Each competition has its pros and cons. My personal favorite would be to take one element from each. I would take the payouts of the RTFC on RTsports. The $10,000 is the most attainable and has the lowest rake. For roster construction, I like the FFWC the best. With three starting WRs and two Flex players, there’s a great balance between the Flex positions. Lastly, we would need the scoring of the FPC and NFFC. I like the TE Premium scoring, and particularly if we had three starting WRs along with two Flex spots, all three of the skill position players would be viable for those Flex positions. With all the mobile QBs taking over fantasy, I think having the 6PT Passing TDs of the NFFC can level the playing field a bit. One can dream, right?
