Week 5 DFS Picks: Best Game and Team Stacks

Every Sunday in the weekly fantasy chats, I get asked about my favorite plays of the week or who is in my player pool that weekend for DFS.

This article series covers exactly that.

Every week, I will go through the players I am targeting to play in DFS for all games, tournaments, and game stacks.

The idea is that this will paint a clearer picture of framing lineups.

Week 5 DFS Content:

One of my favorite ways to play DFS from a tournament stance is small-field, single-to-five-max entry games with 5K or smaller fields.

Both sites even offer these games with fewer than 100 entries (albeit at a higher cost of entry) if you want to go after a small field.

In these contests, my approach is to go with full-game stacks.

You lose a lot of weeks, but if you get the game right, you gain a big advantage.

Cashing in one of these over an 18-week season can make your entire year.

With the reduced number of entries, you can also eat some chalky game stacks because we are going further in the overall game stack than our opponents likely will.

These are the games I am circling for those tournaments in Week 5, but you can also tie these games into your stacks for other tournaments.

I will analyze the player selections and game writeups, but for a detailed breakdown of the players and games, check out the Week 5 Worksheet.

Ravens at Bengals

This game has the highest total among the early-afternoon kickoffs (49 points) for good reasons.

Cincinnati games are averaging 51.5 combined points per game, the second-most in the NFL.

The Ravens are averaging a first down or touchdown every 2.89 plays on offense, second in the NFL.

The Bengals are averaging a first down or touchdown every 2.96 plays on offense, which is third in the NFL.

We have plenty of star power in Lamar Jackson, Derrick Henry, Joe Burrow, and Ja’Marr Chase.

The only issue with this game is that stacking it is tough due to the high-end salaries of those players and not many of the ancillary pieces carrying a ton of appeal.

Even the smallest and the cleanest stack of Jackson + Henry + Chase will cost you 45.5% of your cap at FanDuel and 46.6% at DraftKings.

A Burrow double stack with Chase and Tee Higgins will cost 39.8% at FanDuel and 40.8% at DraftKings before you even add a Baltimore bringback.

Suppose you want to get aggressive with this game.

In that case, you will have to go into the well on the Ravens pass catchers (Zay Flowers, Isaiah Likely, Justice Hill, Rashod Bateman, or even Mark Andrews) or attempt to get the weeks right on boom-or-bust plays such as Tee Higgins, Chase Brown, and Andrei Iosivas on the Cincinnati side.