Week 9 of the NFL DFS season has arrived and it is time to win some big money using stacks.
While fantasy football stacks are becoming more prevalent in redraft leagues, the ability to stack players has always been one of the main strategic plays in daily fantasy.
This weekly article will focus on what are the best stack plays in a given week for DFS.
While these plays can be applicable to FanDuel and other daily fantasy sites, this article will focus primarily on DraftKings pricing.
What is stacking in DFS?
A fantasy football stack is when you take two or more players from the same team in order to double your points. This is a strategy that is especially useful in games with high over-unders.
While you are able to stack a quarterback with a running back and or a tight end, we’ll be focusing on the best stacks available between a quarterback and a wide receiver.
What is most important when stacking in DFS?
What is most important to pay attention to, with or without stacking, is a player's cost and their ultimate output of points.
For example: QB Jalen Hurts had an average cost of $6,700 last season and had five weeks in which he scored 4x his weekly cost.
Ultimately, factoring in the elements of stacking players along with a strong return on investment on players' costs will put you in the best position to cash in this season.
Week 10 NFL DFS Stacks & Picks for DraftKings, FanDuel
Without further ado, here are some of the best DFS stack options for Week 9 of the 2022 NFL season:
QB Justin Fields ($6,500) & WR Darnell Mooney ($5,500), Bears vs Lions
- Combined Price: $12,000 – 24% of lineup salary
Last week, Justin Fields had his fantasy coming out party. In a high-scoring affair against the Dolphins, Fields scored 45.72 points, the fourth most points scored in a week among all players this season.
While Week 10 might not be another 40-point game, stacking Fields with Darnell Mooney against the Lions will be a profitable stack.
It should be noted that Fields's strong week did not come out of nowhere. The Bears signal caller has scored 20 points or more in his last three games.
Also important to note, it has not been a slew of soft matchups as one of those games came against a Cowboys defense that is sixth in fewest points allowed to the position.
Up next for Fields and Mooney is a Lions defense that has allowed the seventh most points to both quarterbacks and wide receivers.
More specifically with wide receivers, the Lions have allowed 30 or more points to the position in seven of their games, including two games with more than 50 points allowed.
All of this bodes well for Mooney who had his best fantasy outing of the season last week with 17.5 points scored.
While still getting acclimated to the offense, the addition of Chase Claypool will help evenly distribute the opposing defense’s attention.
Even prior to the Claypool trade, Mooney has been seeing an increase in targets. This season, Mooney has had four games with six or more targets. Three of those games have come in the last four weeks.
Circling back to Fields, his statistical output has been like a lesser version of Lamar Jackson where the passing yards are not eye popping but his rushing ability sure is.
Headed into this week, Fields is second in the league among quarterbacks with 602 yards rushing, included in that was his record-setting 178 yards rushing last week.
With that in mind, it does not hurt to note that the Lions are fourth in rushing yards allowed to the position.
QB Patrick Mahomes ($7,800) & WR JuJu Smith-Schuster ($6,000), Chiefs vs Jaguars
- Combined Price: $13,800 – 27.6% of lineup salary
As it stands, Patrick Mahomes is second only to Josh Allen in points scored amongst quarterbacks. This makes Mahomes an obvious choice on most occasions but I especially like the idea of stacking him and JuJu Smith-Schuster against the Jaguars this week.
Headed into Week 10, Smith-Schuster is highest scoring Chiefs wide receivers and is seventeenth in the league at his position.
In the last three weeks, Smith-Schuster has had two 20-point games. The one week in which did not would be last week as he failed to reach the endzone but had 10 receptions against the Titans.
That would mark his first game with double-digit receptions since Week 16 of the 2018 season.
As for his opponent, the Jaguars are ninth in points allowed and are one of just five teams to allow double-digit touchdowns to opposing wide receivers.
There is no doubt that could always invest in Travis Kelce at $7,800 instead. That combined salary would wind up absorbing 31.2% of your DraftKings budget.
Considering the Jaguars allowing only 8.6 points on a per game basis to tight ends, and Smith-Schuster’s upward trend, I would prefer to invest in the Chiefs leading wide receiver instead.
Promoting someone like Mahomes honestly writes itself. The Chiefs signal caller has had four games with 30 or more points scored. Along with that, he had just two games in which he has thrown multiple touchdown passes.
Much like Mahomes, the Jaguars defense has had three games with at least 30 points allowed to opposing quarterbacks. They are also allowing the seventh most passing yards which equals out to an average of 250 yards per game.
QB Russell Wilson ($5,900) & WR Jerry Jeudy ($5,700), Buccaneers vs Titans
- Combined Price: $11,600 – 23.2% of lineup salary
I agree that compared to his days as a Seahawk, Russell Wilson has been abysmal. I also agree that his Subway ads have been insufferable at best.
All of that said, this is a promising week for the struggling quarterback and I like the idea of stacking him with Jerry Jeudy.
Wilson is priced at $5,900 and while his play justifies it, it is worth noting that this is the first time the Broncos quarterback has been priced below $6,000 since Week 12 of the 2018 season.
As always mentioned, investing in a player in daily fantasy is about getting a return on your investment. In order for Wilson to score four times his DraftKings price, he would need to score 23.6 points.
While Wilson has only hit above that mark once this season, the Titans have allowed more than 23.6 points to quarterbacks on four occasions this season. One of those games came last week in which the Titans allowed 38.14 points.
Allowing such point totals has the Titans sitting at sixth in most points allowed to the position.
Lost in the Broncos' offensive struggles has been a surging Jerry Jeduy. Headed into this week, Jeudy is the only Broncos wide receiver with multiple touchdown receptions (three).
While his lone game with more than 20 points this season came back in Week 1, his increase in targets has been encouraging.
The Broncos pass catcher has had seven or more targets in his last four games, including 11 targets in Week 7.
Much like an earlier defense mentioned in this article, the Titans are one of five defenses allowed double-digit touchdowns to wide receivers.
In two weeks this season, the defense allowed more than 50 points to the position and had 42 missed tackles on passing plays this season.
Prior to their bye, the Broncos played another favorable wide receiver opponent in the Jaguars. In that game, Jeudy caught six of seven targets for 63 yards and a touchdown.
That performance resulted in 18.3 points and that is a total I feel can be replicated against a struggling Titans defense.
One last encouraging thought prior to this away game for the Broncos, five of Jeudy’s six career touchdowns have come on the road.
Russell Wilson is not pretty, I get it., but this investment will prove to be a pleasant surprise.
QB Tua Tagovailoa ($6,700) & WR Tyreek Hill ($9,100), Dolphins vs Browns
- Combined Price: $15,800 – 31.6% of lineup salary
This is the second week in a row that I recommend a Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill stack. It comes with good reason as the Dolphins tandem continues to produce. I see this week being no different against the Browns.
In the last two weeks, Tagovailoa has had back-to-back games with over 300 yards passing. That would mark the first time in his career that this has happened. Along with that, it also marks the first time in his career that the Dolphins quarterback has had back-to-back games with three or more touchdown passes.
Digging deeper on touchdowns and putting into perspective just how good Tagovailoa has been, in his seven games played this season, he has thrown 35.7% of his career touchdown passes.
Tagovailoa and the Dolphins will look to carry that momentum against a tough Browns defense.
There has to be a general understanding that when selecting stacks, especially with bye weeks and injuries, not every stack will be against the most ideal opponent. The Browns fall into that category.
On the season, the Browns defense is allowing the 12th fewest points to opposing quarterbacks. Looking deeper into that ranking however, one could play devil's advocate and suggest that the Browns offense has faced a ton of tough matchups.
Holding down teams such as the Falcons, Panthers, or Steelers from a quarterback perspective does not seem all that difficult.
This is where I rely less on rankings and more so on the fact that Mike McDaniel has tapped into Tagovailoa’s potential and is hammering opposing defenses.
What is also worth noting is that the Dolphins have often found themselves in situations in which they need to throw the ball in order to keep up with an opposing offense.
The Dolphins have allowed 224 points this season which is the most in their conference. This as much as his own abilities has been what has helped Tagovailoa become the 11th highest scoring quarterback on the season.
On the receiving end of all this offensive production has been Tyreek Hill. While he is priced at $600 more this week than last week, Hill is still well worth the price of admission.
The Dolphins pass catcher is leading all wide receivers in fantasy points scored this season. Along with that, Hill’s 1,104 receiving leads the league and is 237 yards more than the next best wide receiver.
That is a pace of over 2,000 yards receiving.
Speaking specifically about this week, we have already mentioned that the Browns defense can be tough. That being said, wide receiver might be the way in which to attack this defense.
Headed into this week, 66.22% of the Browns receiving yards allowed have come against wide receivers.
There have also been two weeks in which the Browns allowed more than 40 points to the wide receiver position.
While the defense is indeed good, with more offensive yards than any other team in football, the Dolphins present a threat.