Week 18 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 18 NFL DFS Stacks & Picks for DraftKings, FanDuel
Without further ado, here are some of the best DFS stack options for Week 18 of the 2022 NFL season:
QB Aaron Rodgers ($6,000) & WR Allen Lazard ($5,500), Packers vs Lions
- Combined Price: $11,500 – 23% of lineup salary
When you look across the Week 18 landscape, part of the DFS game is to pinpoint teams that have something to play for. Reason being, you want to avoid the player in your lineup getting pulled early or not playing at all.
With that in mind, the stack of Aaron Rodgers and Allen Lazard becomes an intriguing one.
It has been an odd year for Rodgers. After having 10 games of scoring 20 or more points last season, he has just one this season.
That being said, there are motivating factors this week for Rodgers. As previously mentioned, there are playoff implications in this final matchup of the season.
With a win, Rodgers and the Packers will secure a playoff spot.
On top of the playoff implications, Rodgers will be looking to redeem himself for what was his worst start of the season.
Against the Lions back in Week 9, Rodgers posted a season-low 53.5% completion percentage and threw three interceptions.
Even though the Lions recorded three interceptions that week, this is a defense that is far from fierce. Headed into the last week of the season, the Lions defense has allowed more points to quarterbacks than any other team.
Since that win against the Packers in Week 9, the Lions have allowed 20 points or more to quarterbacks in seven of their last eight games played.
Over their last three games, the Lions are allowing the seventh most yards per pass attempt in the league.
What also bodes well for Rodgers in this matchup is the fact that over the last three weeks, the Lions are 10th in fewest takeaways on a per-game basis.
These sorts of numbers make the Lions shutting down Rodgers earlier in the season looking more and more like an anomaly.
On the receiving end of Rodgers’s redemption game will be Allen Lazard.
Lazard leads all Packers wide receivers in targets and yards. With his teammate Christian Watson continuing to deal with a hip issue, Lazard should be expected to lead the way for Packers pass catchers.
While it has been seven weeks since Lazard’s last touchdown, that last touchdown game against the Lions.
On top of his touchdown in that game, the Packers pass catcher was targeted 10 times and had 87 yards receiving.
QB Dak Prescott ($6,600) & WR CeeDee Lamb ($8,200), Cowboys vs Commanders
- Combined Price: $14,800 – 29.5% of lineup salary
Even with Dak Prescott turning the ball over at a stomach-churning rate, Week 18 will be a great week to stack the Cowboys quarterback with CeeDee Lamb.
Fantasy is all about opportunity and over the last three weeks, the Cowboys are 10th in the league in pass attempts on a per game basis.
The results of those pass attempts have Prescott with 20-point games in two out of his last three weeks and an average 295 yards passing.
As previously mentioned, turnovers have been a problem with Prescott and his final DFS scores. Luckily for Prescott and fantasy players, the Commanders are one of six teams with fewer than 10 interceptions on the season.
Even better, the Commanders defense has allowed 25 touchdown passes this season, tied for the fifth-most in the league.
Due to his injury early in the season, Prescott has played just four games on the road. That being said, headed into this divisional road game, Prescott is averaging 2.5 touchdown passes per road game.
CeeDee Lamb will be Prescott’s No. 1 receiver this week and is fourth in scoring at his position.
Most recently, Lamb has been on an absolute tear. The Cowboys star receiver has had three straight games with 100 yards receiving and is averaging 27.9 DraftKings points in that time.
Lamb currently has seven games of 20 points or more scored. Five of those seven games have come since Week 12
The recurring theme in this article is playoff implications and the Cowboys are one of the teams that fall into that category. While the Eagles game kicks off at the same time as the Cowboys and Commanders, an Eagles loss and Cowboys win will give Dallas the division.
In conclusion, the Cowboys have every reason to play mistake-free football and win this week. Prescott and Lamb will be at the forefront of that.
QB Trevor Lawrence ($6,100) & WR Zay Jones ($5,000), Jaguars vs Titans
- Combined Price: $11,100 – 22.2% of lineup salary
While you will need to be in a Saturday and Sunday contest for this option, rounding out our stacks with playoff implications is Trevor Lawrence and Zay Jones.
As unlikely as it may have seemed this time last year, the Jaguars can win the AFC South with a victory against the Titans.
In their last meeting against the Titans, Lawrence had his best fantasy performance of the season. Throwing for 368 yards and three touchdowns, the former No. 1 overall pick had scored 36.42 points.
Add six more games with 20 or more points scored and Lawrence is seventh among all quarterbacks in DraftKings points.
For the Jaguars quarterback to score three times his price tag of $6,100, Lawrence will need to score 18.3 points. On top of him having nine games in which he has surpassed that score, the Titans are allowing an average of 22.2 points per game to quarterbacks.
On top of the Titans allowing the third most points to opposing quarterbacks, over the last three weeks, their defense is allowing the seventh most passing yards per game.
It is important to note that Lawrence has been dealing with a toe injury. For those who suspect that was why he scored just 5.48 points last week, think again. That Week 17 matchup was against a Texans team who surprisingly are allowing the fewest points to the position this season.
As we are laying out here, the Week 18 matchup against the Titans is on the other end of a tough matchup and one that I have relied on for most of this season.
On the receiving end of Lawrence’s passes will be Zay Jones. While Jones also had a quiet game last week, expect Jones to score in bunches this Saturday.
In his previous matchup against the Titans, Jones had eight receptions for 77 yards and a touchdown. Those numbers on the gridiron turned into 21.7 fantasy points, one of four times in which Jones has surpassed twenty points this season.
In order for Jones to surpass three times his Week 18 cost, the Jaguars receiver will need to surpass 15 points.
On top of the game Jones already had against his divisional foe, the Titans have allowed the ninth most points to the wide receiver position in the last three weeks.
