When it comes to construction of an NFL daily fantasy sports lineup for a GPP, perhaps no single issue gets more attention than stacking. To those unfamiliar with the term, stacking refers to using multiple players from the same team on your DFS roster, with the theory being that a big offensive day from one teammate translates into big days from the others.
When it comes to football, one of the tried and true commandments of the game is that your quarterback should be coupled with his favorite downfield target. For the vast majority of teams, that target is a wide receiver, and for the few others the tight end.
In terms of the “do nots” of stacking, it is considered taboo in traditional thought to use the QB and RB from the same offense, with the thought being that a big day from one lessens the chances of a big day from the other. To a lesser extent, the RB/DST stack has been touted with the theory being that long drives on the ground lead to large time of possession edges that keep the ball out of their opponent’s hands.
Looking past the QB/WR and RB/DST stack, other positional stacks get far less attention, but using results of current season performance, it is wise for a serious player to go over the winning DFS lineups and see what other stacks are getting it done, as well as whether the old “no QB/RB stack” commandment is holding against actual data.
For this exercise, we will examine the 12 FanDuel Sunday Million lineups to date and see what stack magic is being performed.
Week 1 winning lineup stacks (2): QB/RB – Kansas City (favored -1): RB/DST – San Francisco (underdogs +2.5)
Week 2 (2): QB/WR – Pittsburgh (fav -6): RB/TE – New England (dogs +1)
Week 3 (1): QB/TE – Carolina (fav -9.5)
Week 4 (2): QB/WR – San Diego (fav -5): K/DST – Carolina (fav -3)
Week 5 (2): QB/WR – NYG (fav -7.5): RB/K – Atlanta (fav -7)
Week 6 (1): QB/WR – Detroit (fav -3.5)
Week 7 (3): QB/WR – Indianapolis (fav -5): WR/K – Minnesota (dogs +1): RB/DST – St. Louis (fav -6)
Week 8 (1): QB/WR – New Orleans (fav -3)
Week 9 (2): RB/WR – Pittsburgh (fav -6): K/DST – NYG (fav -2)
Week 10 (2): Triple Stack WR/WR/DST – Pittsburgh (fav -7): RB/WR – New Orleans (fav -1)
Week 11 (3): QB/RB – Seattle (fav -14): TE/K – Carolina (fav -7) WR/DST – Houston (dogs +4)
Week 12 (1): Triple Stack RB/K/DST – Minnesota (dogs +2)
Twelve weeks of Million results and not a single winner failed to stack. In fact, in eight of the 12 winning lineups, either multiple teams were stacked, or more than two players from one team were stacked. Let’s look at the 22 stacks by type and what the point spread was for the teams in those stacks:
QB/WR = 5, QB/TE = 1 (fav -6, fav -5, fav -7.5, fav -5, fav -3, fav -9.5): QB/RB = 2 (fav -1, fav -14), QB/K = 1 (fav -3.5)
RB/DST = 2 (dogs +2.5, fav -1): RB/WR = 2 (fav -6, fav -1): RB/TE = 1 (dogs +1): RB/K = 1 (fav -7)
WR/K = 1 (dogs +1), WR/DST = 1 (dogs +4)
TE/K = 1 (fav -7)
K/DST = 2 (fav -3, fav -2)
WR/WR/DST = 1 (fav -7)
RB/K/DST = 1 (dogs +2)
The first thing that becomes quite obvious is that the winners are those who can think outside of the box. We have a total of eight stacks with the standard QB/WR, QB/TE, and RB/DST, but many of the other 13 stacks really flew in the face of conventional wisdom. We have a pair of QB/RB stacks, the taboo tandem! And when you consider how strongly the TE performance is tied to getting into the end zone due to their limited targets, the TE/K and RB/TE stacks are unconventional to say the least.
When we incorporate the game point spreads into our analysis, we see that of the 22 stacks used by the winners, 17 of them were comprised of the favorites. Of the five underdog stacks, four of them were less than three point dogs. Of the nine stacks that incorporated a QB, all nine were favored, which again throws out the notion that your significant underdog will roll up fantasy points chasing an early hole.
It is safe to conclude that NFL stacking in a huge GPP field is pretty essential, as is fading the urge to use the cheap QB/WR stack of big underdogs from which you hope to get huge second half fantasy points. When you consider the Million has a standard field size in the neighborhood of 200,000 entries, it is plain to see that even mixing and matching players from nine different teams and being right on most of them will still put you short of the top, but do not be afraid to stack outside the box if your research leads you there.