2026 FFPC Big Gorilla Tournament Preview and 2025 Retrospective
2025 Preview
The FFPC “Big Gorilla” (top overall prize of $1,000,000 Grand Prize) is one of the flagship redraft tournaments offered by the FFPC, with a $350 entry fee per team (or 3 for $1,000).
The Big Gorilla is actually two tournaments in one. The traditional prize structure, with a $1,000,000 grand prize for the overall winner, is in effect again in 2026. Beyond the top prize, there are some differences this year vs last in terms of prizes.
- Slightly larger tournament pool size – 18,000 teams in 2026 (1500 leagues) vs 17,700 teams (1475 leagues) in 2025. Last year was a SELLOUT, after coming up slightly short on a 2024 sellout. The “Early Rampage” and “Seven Bananas” promotions (described below) proved to be very popular.
- Tournament payouts for your final overall finish within the Championship Round remain the same as 2025. At the top you have $1,000,000 for 1st, $150,000 for 2nd, $50,000 for 3rd, and so on (full breakdown in the chart below).
- Prizes for coming in 1st or 2nd within your individual league remain the same. 1st place prize of $1500 (or 2027 Main Event entry or 5 2027 Big Gorilla entries), and a 2nd place prize of $500. Do not lose sight of the importance of cashing in your individual league playoffs. With a very top heavy prize payout in the Championship Round, and the fact only the top 20% of finishers in the Championship Round qualify for any cash prize, cashing in your league championship is an important factor to consider at the end of the year with respect to your ROI. In saying that, it may impact your decisions on draft day with respect to any bye weeks scheduled for teams that occur during weeks 13 and 14 of the NFL season, when the league championships in the Big Gorilla take place.
- 2 consecutive 7 picks wins a $125 Best Ball Tournament credit (Odds: 144 to 1)
- 3 consecutive 7 picks wins a 2027 FFPC Main Event entry – $2200 value (Odds: 1728 to 1)
- 4 consecutive 7 picks wins a 2027 FFPC High Society League entry – $10,000 value (Odds: 20,736 to 1)
- 5 consecutive 7 picks wins an all-expense paid Jungle Safari for four or $50,000 in cash (Odds: 248,832 to 1)
- Regular Season – The regular season WILL BE 12 WEEKS. You will play the 11 other teams in your league once, and Week 6 will be conducted as an “ALL-PLAY” week, where the 12 teams will be ranked according to points. The top 6 teams in Week 6 get a win, and the bottom 6 teams a loss.
- League Championships – Weeks 13 and 14 are a 2 week head to head elimination between the top 4 seeds coming out of the regular season (seeds based on overall record and win loss record). Newer players should keep in mind that there may be players on bye weeks during this championship period. (Schedules are TBD). If you make it to the league championships and lose week 13, there is no league prize money. Making it to the Week 14 championship game has a 1st place prize of $1500 and 2nd place prize of $500. Carrying week 13/14 bye players strengthens your team to win the league (as you won’t have to fill in for them during regular season byes), but you may stumble in the league championships. Regardless of your league playoff outcome, the top two (2) seeds (highest points and best record) of each league in the regular season earn an automatic berth into the Championship Round, where the big money prize is. The league champion also earns a berth into the Championship Round, so if you win the league as a 3/4 seed coming into them, you also advance to the Championship Round.
- Championship Round – From each individual league, 2 to 3 teams will earn a berth to the Championship Round, which is a 3 week total points sprint in weeks 15 -17 for the overall title. The regular season overall points leader and win-loss leader from each league automatically win berths into the Championship Round. An additional third team can make it to the Championship Round if they win the league championship, but were not the league point / win-loss leader. In 2025, the Championship Round had 3,641 teams competing against one another in this 3 week sprint. It’s not JUST about week 17, but a cumulative performance across 3 weeks that starts with your average weekly score during the 12 week regular season. Below you will find links to an “Enhanced Leaderboard” from the 2025 Championship Round, which not only shows the final standings, but the standings at the beginning, and after each week of the 3 week sprint. It gives you a good sense of where the winners were slotted overall before games actually started in week 15.
THE EARLY RAMPAGE IS BACK IN 2026 – There is an additional tournament, called “The Early Rampage”, that is a COMPLETELY FREE ADDITIONAL BONUS for those players who sign up and join as one of the first 2,400 teams (200 leagues) that draft before June 30. The Early Rampage Tournament runs in parallel with the Big Gorilla (ie, league winners advance to the championship round) and has $25,000 in prizes, with $10,000 to the overall winner. Fun fact: Last year, the team who finished 4th overall in the Big Gorilla (Tommy Island), also finished 1st in the Early Rampage tournament with that same team.
The “Seven Bananas” promotion is also back in 2026. The Seven Bananas promotion rewards teams for being assigned the 7 pick in consecutive Big Gorilla drafts. To qualify for the promo, the 7-picks must be acquired in CONSECUTIVE filled drafts. For fun, we ran the numbers to calculate the odds of receiving the 7 pick two, three, four, and five times in the row.
In 2025, we saw dozens of $125 “seven bananas” winners, multiple Main Event winners, and there was in fact one lucky winner of a $10,000 High Society entry.
Here is a chart summarizing the prizes within the 2026 Championship Round. As mentioned before, this is a very top heavy competition, and overall only the top 20% (approximately) of finishers in the Championship Round receive an overall prize (in addition to whatever league prize they won of course).
As far as the format of the fantasy competition itself, the season schedule is broken into 3 segments, the same as 2025. Pay special attention to the notes about the All-Play week, and the fact that the regular season is relatively short (12 weeks). Complaints by players who do not read the rules and understand the format BEFORE THEY DRAFT are often seen at the end of the season. Do not be THAT GUY, who then complains to the FFPC after the fact. You are sinking $350 into each team for this tournament, so get informed. Now back to the contest format……
For complete rules and prizes, visit the OFFICIAL overview of the competition HERE.
Early drafters in the tournament often consist of the most hard core players of the FFPC. They will hop in early and often during the early months of the draft season. Some of these players will end up with over 100 teams, in the hope of obtaining as many “bullets” as possible to fire in the Championship Round. The player pool tends to widen as the summer months kick in, and the volume of drafts increase day by day. Additionally, draft results tend to vary more as the draft season progresses in lock step with the widening of the players who participate in the drafts. If you are looking for teams that have a higher variance of outcome at the end of the season (for better or worse), you will want to get in some early drafts before the rookie landing spots, free agency, and team roles are determined closer to the season. #JustSayin
2025 Retrospective
In 2025, the contest was comprised of 1475 individual leagues of 12 teams and was a sell-out. The drafts for these leagues were conducted over the course of the preseason, beginning February 2nd (for true degenerates), well before the NFL draft in May, and running right up until the Sunday Week 1 kickoff. We have examined the drafts of the winning teams in this competition to identify trends on player selection and roster construction.
If you are a new player, the data contained in these reports should help provide you with a framework for drafting in 2026. If you are an experienced player, a lot of what you see may seem like things you already know, but seeing the numbers crunched should confirm a lot of the best practices that you have been implementing when drafting these teams in the past. Also note that unlike best ball, the drafts for these season long contests are only a partial component of overall success. Waiver wire pickups and weekly lineup decisions also play a huge part, so you may find reviewing the 2025 waiver wire pickups helpful for some guidance. It summarizes, for each waiver run, how much FAAB is generally required to win players based on the particular week of the season. You can find that data HERE.
The analyses provided here are in the context of making it to the Championship Round. Success during the Championship Round is going to be based primarily on the production of players within that 3 week (15-17) sprint which can be unpredictable. Consider that there is a lot of player overlap among the teams in the Championship Round. Having the top performers during weeks 15-17 (and actually starting them) is the primary determination of your success there. When you review the “Deep Dive into the Top 5 Overall Winners”, we note a player’s statistical positional ranking specifically within that time frame.
Enough of the chit chat, let’s look at the data! (FYI, the analyses themselves are premium subscriber material)
Roster Deep Dive of the Top 5 Winners OverallAn in depth look at the rosters of top 5 teams overall from 2025. It provides the complete overall picture of how the teams evolved from draft to championship. There is a a master chart that breaks down the detail from each of those teams. These teams won between $1,000,000 (1st) and $15,000 (5th). The master chart that we compile will show: • Every player rostered on every top 5 finisher during the championship rounds (weeks 15-17) |
Draft Slots of Winning TeamsThis analysis examines the draft slots of the teams that made it into the Championship round, and shows which were the best (and worst) draft slots to draft from in 2025. |
Winning Roster Construction of Drafted TeamsThis analysis breaks down the number of players drafted at each position for every team TOURNEY WIDE, and compares those metrics with the number of players drafted at each position by TEAMS THAT MADE IT to the Championship Round in 2024. |
Player Advance Rates To The Championship RoundThis analysis looks at the drafts of the teams that made it to the championship round and looks at the percentage of players owned on those teams. |
Rookies Drafted Per Championship Round TeamThis analysis looks at the drafts of the teams that made it to the Championship Round and counts the number of rookies drafted by those teams to determine if there is an optimal number of rookies to draft, or more importantly, when you have gone too far and compromised your team. |
Championship Round Finish For Teams By Month DraftedThis analysis takes a very close look at the overall finish of teams within the Championship round based on where they finished and what month they drafted their team. There is a lot of speculation regarding when the best time is to draft your tourney teams. Is it better to draft them early in the preseason and land players BEFORE their ADP might rise? Or is it better to play it safe, and wait until closer to the season to avoid any potential landmines around player injuries? |
Player StackingWe have created a few player “Stack Explorer” tools on the site. These have been very popular during the tournament draft season. We also created a stack explorer which lets you analyze player stacks for the teams that made it to the Championship Round. Based on a particular player stack, you can see which teams in the Championship Round had that stack, and also what their final standing was. The tool actually lets you see the results for ANY combination of players. (Note that the teams in the Main Event Championship Round can also be analyzed using this tool). |
Player Stacks Advancing to the Championship RoundThis analysis breaks down all of the QB / Skill Player stacks that were drafted in the 2025 Big Gorilla Tourney. Each stack is shown with the total # of stacks drafted (across 1475 leagues), and the number of stacks that made it out of their league and advanced to the Championship Round to compete for the overall prize. |
Big Gorilla Championship Round Premium Enhanced LeaderboardOur enhanced leaderboards for the Championship rounds show you how teams progressed through the three weeks of the sprint. You will see the beginning rank, final rank, and also the ranks of the teams after each week. Weekly point scores (in addition to ranking) are included, so you can literally see how teams moved up, or down, after each phase/week of the Championships. Full Team rosters of EVERY TEAM (color coded) are included so you can see at a glance the players on the teams. |
The NFL Opening Weekend “Free Look”The “Free Look” is a lesser known rule quirk that players experienced in the tournament leverage for a competitive advantage during the first weekend of the season. This is a strategy your competitors DON’T want you to know about. As a once famous politician said, “That’s not hyperbole”. |