Welcome to the Daily Fantasy Football Lineup Stacks Report. Every week I look at the top of the leaderboards in a bunch of GPP contests to see what the top 10 winners lineup builds looked like. Then, I examine whether they had stacks built into their lineups and what kind of stacks were most effective that week. Next, we review my recommended stacks from the previous week. Last, I look through this week’s games and give you some game-stacking recommendations for daily fantasy football this week.
Daily Fantasy Football Lineup Stacks for Week Five
This week’s top game stack was once again a familiar one. The Los Angeles Rams/Minnesota Vikings game stack was one of the games that I recommended you target last week. I was only one player off on my favorite stack recommendation for that game. Unfortunately, I missed on Cooper Kupp this week. Instead, I recommended Todd Gurley in my favorite stack for that game. Gurley had another good game this week, but for DFS purposes there was better value to be had at the running back position.
While stacking the Rams game helped to load your lineup with points, that wasn’t enough by itself to win you big money in GPP tournaments this week. Instead, because so many popular players had big weeks in Week Four, you really needed complete domination across your whole lineup to land at the top this week. For instance, I had multiple lineups score in the 195-220 range this week, mostly because of my game-stacks from the Atlanta Falcons–Cincinnati Bengals game and Rams/Vikings game. I built about half of my 20 lineups around those two games. Usually, scores that high will place you near or at the top in most weeks, but not in Week Four.
The cash line in the Milly Maker this week was 182.78, and in most of the GPPs that I researched the cash line was right around 189. This is an indication of the kind of week that it was in DFS. Tons of players had massive amounts of fantasy points this week. So, even though game-stacking may have got you most of the way there, if you stacked the right game, you still needed to hit on all the rest of the selections on your team in order to win any significant amount of money this week. Hopefully, you were one of the people that played either my Falcons/Bengals or Rams/Vikings stacks and paired them with the right secondary players in your lineups. I noticed that a high percentage of the winners this week were riding with those stacks in their lineups. Outside of the Milly Maker, most of the top 10 there had the Bears super-stack in their lineups. Don’t lose faith in the game-stacking strategy yet. If you want confirmation that game-stacks work just look at the top of all the GPP leaderboards and see how many of those winners used the game-stack strategy. Contest data found on Draft Kings.
The Stacking Statistics
Here’s a breakdown of the top 10 winners in GPPs on Draft Kings from this past week and what kind of stacks, if any, were in their lineups.
No stack – 5 percent
Two player stack – 17.5 percent
Super stack (three players from one team) – 32.5 percent
Game stack (Three players, at least one from both teams) – 8.75 percent
Super game stack (four or more players from the same game and at least one from each team) – 36.25 percent
As you can see from the numbers this week, things were a little more spread out. With so many players having big weeks it seems like there were a million different ways to win. However, the game stack strategy still came out on top again this week yet again, though by only a small margin. One thing you should be aware of is the Milly Maker kind of skews the numbers a bit. If you take that one contest out of the mix, the percentage of game-stacked winners is even higher.
Now that we are at the quarter-season mark with four weeks of NFL football in the books, let’s take a look at the averages for the top 10 finishers on the season so far. For the season, out of all the GPPs I have researched, a whopping 90.56 percent of the top ten finishers had stacks built into their lineups. Here’s the breakdown.
No stack – 9.44 percent
Stack – 13.03 percent
Super stack – 16.39 percent
Game stack – 21.26 percent
Super game stack – 39.88 percent
This is absolute evidence that the game-stacking strategy works in GPPs. It makes a ton of sense to target the games that could be high scoring, back and forth shootouts by stacking the quarterback, his receivers, then a correlating wide receiver or receivers from the opponent. However, every team and every game is different. Not only do I use point totals, but individual matchups analysis, target shares, player projections, and salary cap analysis are also important tools that I use in the search to find the best stacks.
Some NFL teams lack the talent and depth on offense, and might not have the players that are right for using in our stacks, picking the right combination of players is ultimately the most important thing. Offenses like the Minnesota Vikings and Houston Texans are both great for stacking. They both have a very good quarterback and two receivers that get the vast majority of targets. This makes it more likely that when the quarterback has a big game, most of his production will correlate with his receivers, meaning they will likely have big games too. Simplified, the strategy is to look for the big time quarterbacks, with great receivers, in good matchups, against a team that also has a big time quarterback and receivers that can turn the game into a shootout. That is the scenario we look to exploit by game-stacking. Player points found at (DK Live)
Week Four Game Stack Review
Let’s take a look at my top scoring game stack recommendation for Week Four and how it did. Then, we’ll look at the top scoring game-stack on Draft Kings in Week Four.
My game stack recommendations for last week’s action:
Jared Goff/Todd Gurley/Robert Woods/Adam Thielen/Stefon Diggs=148.8
Matt Ryan/Julio Jones/ Calvin Ridley/A.J. Green/ Tyler Boyd =124.86
Patrick Mahomes/Tyreek Hill/ Travis Kelce/ Emmanuel Sanders/ Phillip Lindsay =88.46
Drew Brees/ Alvin Kamara/ Michael Thomas/ Cameron Meredith/ Odell Beckham =81.58
Top scoring game-stack of the week:
Jared Goff, Cooper Kupp, Brandin Cooks, Adam Thielen, Stefon Diggs =167.9
Week Five Games to Stack in Daily Fantasy Football
Moving on to this week, we have another juicy matchup that once again involves the Atlanta Falcons. Atlanta travels to Pittsburgh this week to take on the Pittsburgh Steelers in what should be a high scoring matchup. Speaking of high scoring matchups, we have five games this week with Vegas over/under totals of 50+ points.
Here are the games, and players from those games, that I think we should target this week. Plus, my favorite lineup stack from each game.
Atlanta Falcons at Pittsburgh Steelers O/U (57.5) PIT -3
This is the highest point total out of all the games this week. And for good reason as neither of these defenses can stop anybody. The Steelers have given up an average of 29 points per game this season and the Falcons 30.5. Since both of these offenses are better than average, I’m thinking this game has a good chance to get up around that 57.5 point total and possibly even go over. If that happens, this game will be a great source of fantasy points for DFS this weekend. I’ll be rolling out a few stacks from this contest. Here is my favorite stack from this game.
My stack:
Matt Ryan/Julio Jones/Calvin Ridley/James Conner/JuJu Smith-Schuster
Green Bay Packers at Detroit Lions O/U (51) Packers -1
These two teams are both very good at the quarterback and wide receiver positions. Aaron Rodgers has the better matchup of the two quarterbacks here but Matthew Stafford is the cheaper of the two and he has the better receivers. It’s a tough decision which way to go here but my analysis says to go with Rodgers. Here’s my favorite stack.
My stack:
Aaron Rodgers/Davante Adams/Golden Tate/Kenny Golladay
Minnesota Vikings at Philadelphia Eagles O/U (44.5) Phi-3
Vegas sees this as a relatively low scoring game with the total currently sitting at 44.5. When I look at this matchup, I see two marquee fantasy quarterbacks with great weapons gearing up for a potential shootout. Kirk Cousins has been a beast on the road this season putting up gaudy numbers in both LA last week and in Green Bay week two. While Carson Wentz hasn’t had his breakout game this season yet, he now has his full complement of weapons from last season back healthy. This could be the week that we see the Philly passing offense put it all together and have a big game. Both of these teams defenses are stingy versus the run but can be had in the passing game. Look for both teams to try to exploit the others weakness in that area of the game.
My stack:
Kirk Cousins/Adam Thielen/Stefon Diggs/Zach Ertz
Here are a couple of bonus super-stacks (team-stacks) that the cornerback/wide receiver matchup charts love this week, and so do I. I would use these stacks in smaller GPPs with somewhere around 500-1,500 entries. The hope here is to end up with a great average across these four players. For instance, last week the Rams stack below averaged just about 34 points per player. That is excellent! A really good average would be around 28 points per. Of course, it all depends on the amount of salary that the stack takes up. For instance, because of the amount of salary cap it takes up, for the following Houston Texans stack to return 4x value, the players need to average 25.1 points per player. The Rams players will need to average 26.7 to achieve 4x return.
Bonus super stack:
Deshaun Watson/DeAndre Hopkins/Will Fuller/Keke Coutee
Jared Goff/Robert Woods/Brandin Cooks/Cooper Kupp
Best of luck in Week Five! Remember these game stacks are for GPP contests only. I wouldn’t recommend rostering too many players from the same team in cash game contests. Also, make sure to check the injury reports before rolling out these stacks this weekend. Remember, I write this article early in the week before injury reports are released. Be sure to check back next week to see how my stacks did and see what games and stacks I recommend for Week Six.
