Week 4 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 5 NFL DFS Stacks & Picks for DraftKings, FanDuel
QB Jared Goff ($6,100) & WR Josh Reynolds ($4,900), Lions vs Patriots
- Combined Price: $11,000 – 22% of lineup salary
The connection between Jared Goff and Josh Reynolds is alive and well. While the hope is that Amon-Ra St.Brown can return to the Lions huddle, Goff and Reynolds is a low-cost stack that I will be investing in.
It cannot be understated just how good Goff has been for fantasy this season.
Through four games, the Lions quarterback already has two games with four touchdown passes. This marks the first time Goff has had multiple games with four touchdown passes since the 2018 season.
While last week was one of those four touchdown games for Goff, it was also his first 300-yard passing performance since Week 1 of last year. Those impressive numbers propelled him to finishing as the number one scoring quarterback on the week.
On the receiving end of Goff’s strong play was Reynolds who caught seven of eight targets for 81 yards and a touchdown. That would mark Reynolds’s first 20+ point performance since the classic fantasy bonanza between the Rams and Chiefs in 2018.
If you are connecting the dots, Goff was Reynolds's quarterback that week as well.
Opposing the Lions this weekend will be a Patriots defense that is allowing 7.5 more points on a per game basis to quarterbacks than they did last season.
Most people assume the Patriots' defense is what it has been and focuses less on what it is. Last season, the Bill Belichick-led Patriots had seven games of allowing 20 or more points. Four weeks into this season and the Patriots have already had three such games.
Among the physical points allowed in a game, the Patriots have had two weeks of 40 or more points allowed to the wide receiver position.
The Patriots' defense might be better than some of the defenses that the Lions have seen this season but at the same time, this Lions offense is better than what we have seen. Look for them to continue being low cost daily fantasy studs.
QB Jalen Hurts ($8,100) & WR A.J. Brown ($7,500), Eagles vs Cardinals
- Combined Price: $15,600 – 31.2% of lineup salary
In terms of DraftKings scoring, Jalen Hurts is the third-best quarterback headed into Week 5. The good times will continue to roll in Week 5 so take full advantage of that by stacking Hurts with A.J. Brown.
Hurts is the epitome of what a rushing quarterback means to fantasy football. While the Eagles quarterback is tied with Cooper Rush with four touchdown passes, it is the 205 rushing yards and four rushing touchdowns that has Hurts scoring twenty or more points in three of his first four games.
While the DFS price tag on Hurts has risen $1,300 since Week 1, all the Eagles quarterback would need to score three times his Week 5 cost is 24.3 points.
Fantasy players have fond memories of Hurts going up against the Cardinals. Back in 2020, Hurts thrashed the Cardinals defense with 338 yards passing and four total touchdowns.
In regards to A.J. Brown, while he is eighth in the NFL among wide receiver targets, the concern is that he has just one touchdown.
Hope is on the horizon with a Cardinals defense that has allowed eight touchdown passes, including three straight games of allowing 30 points or more to the wide receiver position.
On paper, the Cardinals have not allowed much to the quarterback position. That would include back-to-back weeks of allowing 10 points or less. Looking deeper at that however, those games came against a seemingly lost Matthew Stafford and a below average Baker Mayfield.
Those quarterbacks aren’t currently on the level of Hurts and my expectation is that the Eagles quarterback puts up serious fantasy points in a shootout.
Last bit of incentive to stack either side in this weekend’s matchup, the Eagles and Cardinals game currently sits with the second-highest over-under of the week.
QB Ryan Tannehill ($5,800) & WR Robert Woods ($5,200), Titans vs Commanders
- Combined Price: $11,000 – 22% of lineup salary
With the exception of a disastrous game against the Bills, Ryan Tannehill and the Titans offense have been slowly picking up steam. In regards to DFS, Week 5 is the week to strike with a Tannehill and Robert Woods stack.
Headed into the Week 5 matchup against the Commanders, Tannehill carries a price tag of $5,800, which ranks ninth among available quarterbacks in the Sunday main slate.
That price is important to note because all Tannehill would need to score four times his price tag would be 23.2 points.
Tannehill finished less than a point shy of a 20-point week twice this season and out of the Titans' four games played, three have come against teams in the top half of fewest points allowed to quarterbacks.
Week 5 presents a much more favorable matchup to achieve that desired 23.2 points. The Commanders have had two weeks with more than 25 points allowed to the position. This is an extension of last season when Washington was tied with a league-high nine games out of 20+ points allowed to quarterbacks.
On the receiving end of what we hope to be a big game for Tannehill is Robert Woods.
Much like the Titans offense, Woods started slow with just 10.2 points scored in his first two games. Since then, Woods has posted back-to-back 10+ point games. These last two weeks have also been encouraging in the sense that Woods led wide receivers in targets in both games.
Much like the quarterback position, the Commanders have had their troubles stopping the wide receiver position. Heading into Week 5, the Commanders have allowed the third-highest point total to the position with 49.45 points on a per game basis.
This would include them allowing 100 receiving yards to a wide receiver in two games and allowing 97-yards to CeeDee Lamb last week.
Coupling all of this with the ankle injury to Treylon Burks, Woods could be in line for his first 100-yard performance since Week 5 of last season.
QB Zach Wilson ($5,300) & WR Garrett Wilson ($5,200), Bills vs. Ravens
- Combined Price: $10,500 – 21% of lineup salary
It would be easy to continuously suggest top-tier quarterbacks and wide receivers as stack options. While I will still do that from time to time, my suggestion to stack Zach Wilson with Garrett Wilson is certainly going against the grain.
Last week marked the somewhat triumphant return of Zach Wilson. In his first game back from his preseason knee injury, Wilson threw for 128 yards in the fourth quarter and scored 20.78 points.
While that was the 11th-best score among Week 4 quarterbacks, Wilson and the Jets will now turn their attention to the Dolphins.
In spite of the Dolphins’ 3-1 start, their defense is one of three teams to allow over 100 points to opposing quarterbacks. That would include three straight games of allowing 20 or more points.
On top of the quarterback position, the Dolphins have been one of the better teams to stack against. The AFC East leaders have had three straight games of allowing 45 points or more to wide receivers.
To pour a little more on this defense, the Dolphins are allowing 625 yards after the catch and have just one reception interception on the season.
All of this sounds good for Garrett Wilson who enters Week 5 priced at just $5,200. Last week it was Corey Davis, priced at $5,100 this week, who led Jets wide receivers with 74 receiving yards and a touchdown.
Even with that, Wilson only had one less target than Davis. Matter of fact, it is Wilson who leads the team in targets with 39.
My belief is the numbers suggest the effort was there from Wilson to get the rookie wide receiver involved. It is just a matter of time before the two are on the same page and producing fantasy points.
To be clear, this isn’t to suggest that the Jets can win against the Dolphins. This is a declaration that the Jets finally have some offensive firepower to help your DFS lineups.
