NFL DFS Stack Spotlight: Week 8
Stacking is an essential part of NFL DFS. Each week it is important that we identify the best available correlations and apply them carefully to our DFS lineups on DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo. The RotoGrinders LineupHQ Optimizer has a stacking feature we can use to locate high quality options each week, and we’ll use it now to discuss three of the top options from our projections. We can then compare that to the projected ownership to help make our decisions for daily fantasy football.
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Week 8 DFS Stacks Report
Kansas City Chiefs
Top Players to Stack: Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce
Projected Fantasy Points: 39.23 FanDuel/Yahoo, 44.02 DraftKings
Opponent: New York Jets
Top Bring Backs: Jamison Crowder (currently questionable), Denzel Mims
Expected Ownership: medium
You can obviously add more players to this stack considering we are talking about Patrick Mahomes and an electric Chiefs offense, but my sights are set on the Mahomes/Kelce pairing first and foremost.
My favorite site to attack this mini-stack on is DraftKings. Over there, they have the third highest projected points between a QB + one RB/WR/TE. Yet they are projected for just 9.15% ownership. When it comes down to it, tight end is ultimately a pay-down spot for a lot of DFS players on DraftKings. So ultimately, this could be a spot to take advantage of in tournament formats.
The duo is certainly costly, as plugging those guys into your lineup accounts for almost 30% of your salary cap. But that is when a bring-back like Denzel Mims comes into play. He is just $3,200 and is tagged as a top value play by MrTuttle05 in our Premium Filters in LineupHQ.
Seattle Seahawks
Top Players to Stack: Russell Wilson, Tyler Lockett, D.K. Metcalf
Projected Fantasy Points: 53.71 FanDuel/Yahoo, 62.68 DraftKings
Opponent: San Francisco 49ers
Top Bring Backs: Brandon Aiyuk, Kendrick Bourne
Expected Ownership: high
Writing a stacks article and not mentioning Russell Wilson and at least one pass-catcher seems pretty silly. They are now throwing at the third highest frequency in the league, and Russ with at least one of Lockett or Metcalf has pretty much paid off every single week. And perhaps no payoff was as big as Week 7, when Russ (35.92 DraftKings points) and Lockett (56 DraftKings points) absolutely blew up on Sunday Night Football against the Cardinals.
Ownership on those two guys is likely to be an issue, but I’m not so sure the three-man stack will be as popular as people think. We are now looking at three straight games where only one of these WRs has been able to “go off”, while the other one has basically put up a dud. So my gut says that the masses are getting tired of rolling out this three-man stack and will by and large just stick to Russ + one of them.
So I think you have two ways to be a little different here. The first is to just stack and all three of them. The passing volume is high enough—and the targets are condensed enough—that it can still pay off. The other route is to just fade Lockett and roll with a Wilson/Metcalf mini-stack.
Las Vegas Raiders
Top Players to Stack: Derek Carr, Darren Waller
Projected Fantasy Points: 31.59 FanDuel/Yahoo, 36.06 DraftKings
Opponent: Cleveland Browns
Top Bring Backs: Kareem Hunt
Expected Ownership: mid-to-high
I will be very curious to see if this type of Projected Ownership on the Carr/Waller duo holds throughout the weekend. We currently have them projected for the eighth highest ownership on FanDuel, and they are coming in at seventh on DraftKings.
My hope is that those numbers come down as we inch closer to Sunday because I love them as a mini-stack with Kareem Hunt, who is currently the chalkiest player on the entire slate. On those lineups where you want to eat the Hunt chalk, I think this correlation makes a lot of sense.
If Hunt and the Browns can get out to an early lead (via Hunt, we would hope), then Carr and the Raiders will be forced to throw more. And it is safe to say that when Carr throws, it is very likely that the ball is headed Waller’s way. Waller has 56 total targets on the season, and the next closest Raider is Hunter Renfrow all the way down at 30 targets.