Hittin' The Nuts - Squirrelpatrol's Top Stacks: Week 16 Main Slate
Want to hit the nuts and take down 1st place in these massive contests posted by FanDuel and DraftKings? Who better to walk you through their favorite NFL DFS stacks than Squirrelpatrol! Undoubtedly one of the best DFS players in the game today, Squirrelpatrol has accumulated 90+ Live Final seats, taking 2nd place in the 2023 DraftKings Fantasy Baseball World Championship for a $600,000 prize, and most recently, took down the Milly Maker on the Week 2 MNF 2-game slate. Should we roster the chalk stack? How off-the-board should we get in large-field tournaments? Squirrelpatrol answers all of these questions and more below!
As DFS strategies get more advanced, moving from hunch-based decision-making to play-by-play simulations meant to measure how often certain players or stacks appear in the optimal lineup, it’s important to pair both quantitative and qualitative analysis when putting together our NFL DFS lineups. Each week, I’ll be taking a look at our Optimal Stack Tool for both FanDuel and DraftKings and give some thoughts on what the best NFL DFS stacks will be for different contest types and sizes.
NFL DFS Top Stacks for Week 16 Main Slate
Chalk Stack – Justin Fields vs. Arizona Cardinals
Justin Fields has the highest projected ownership at the QB position on both FanDuel (16.6% projected ownership, 16.9% optimal rate) and DraftKings (15.4% projected ownership, 16% optimal rate) for Chicago’s matchup at home against the Cardinals. The Bears are 4.5-point home favorites in this game that has a 43-point total, the 4th-highest out of 9 games on the slate. Fields is the 2nd-most expensive QB on FanDuel and the 3rd-most expensive on DraftKings, and the Bears have the 4th-highest implied team total (23.75).
While I do love playing QBs with rushing upside, and I’ve written positively about Fields in this space multiple times this season, I may be under the field on Fields this Christmas Eve. Particularly in large-field tournaments—where we’re likely to see large-Fields ownership but need to get closer to the true optimal lineup to take down the win—rostering the Chicago QB on 1/6th of my rosters seems a bit too much at his higher price tag. Even on FanDuel, where Fields’ rushing points carry greater relative weight, it’s difficult to get over the field at high projected ownership and a high price tag on a QB in a game with a middle-of-the-pack game total and an implied team total that doesn’t jump off the board.
I won’t fade Fields entirely. If doing only one lineup, I would likely go in another direction just because my guess (which conflicts with the Optimal Stacks Tool) is that he’ll be owned more often than he is optimal. But if doing 6 or more lineups, I’d likely include Fields in one of them. I just think he needs a big rushing day – likely including a rushing touchdown, which he only has 2 of this season – to land on the winning lineup.
While I don’t think stacking rushing-dependent QBs is an absolute must, I prefer to stack my quarterbacks with at least one receiver to bring out their highest upside. For my lineups that are using Fields, the two stacking partners I would consider are DJ Moore and Cole Kmet. I’ll give the nod to Moore as my favorite, with the Bears wide receiver averaging 7 receptions and 106 receiving yards per game over his last 6 games with Fields as the QB.
Pivot Stack
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