Strategies for Best Ball Fantasy Football Tournaments Part 4 of 4 – Stacking

by Primetime Playaz · Published August 13, 2023 · Updated September 4, 2023

Congratulations, you’ve made it to the final article in our best ball series! You’re one step closer to winning some tournaments!

If you’ve ever played Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) DFS Football, you know that stacking (correlation) is critical. It’s picking players from the same team or the same game. It gives you an advantage against the contestants who didn’t stack. There is a lot of research (reference show) as to why stacks are beneficial and which ones to use, and I’ll summarize it for you.

What is a stack? Drafting players from the same team. It doesn’t necessarily have to include a QB, but doing so is optimal. It could be a TE and a WR from the same team. A game stack would be drafting players from the same game. If someone says they created a “stack”, it’s implied they stacked two or more players from the same team. When you stack a game, people would point out they made a “game stack”.

How many different stacks should you make? From what I’ve seen, it looks like teams most of the teams that advanced to the next round had an average of four different stacks. For example, they may have taken three players from PHI, two from CIN, two from IND, and three from DET. I would say between three to five different stacks gets you some nice correlation. I haven’t heard a rule not to go over that so you can be the judge.

Which positions are good to stack? All of them. Just kidding, but really, get the stacks where you can. I know everyone wants to go for QB and WR1 (best correlation), but if you miss it, don’t be afraid to go QB and any other position. If you get the WR1 and miss the QB, it’s ok, you can still get another player from that team, such as a RB to have some positive correlation. Ideally, you’d want all of your QBs stacked with someone. When you don’t stack a QB, they are considered “naked”. Typically the only QBs that are drafted naked are the running ones who may not be throwing to anyone in some games. Even then, you want to try and stack them. If you want some more details on this, I suggest watching Tom Strachan’s (from The Fantasy Sanctuary) video breaking down the 2022 DraftKings Milli-Maker. He goes into the different stacking statistics at the 17:51 mark. The entire video is fantastic and I recommend watching the whole thing. Here is a link to the

How many people from each team should you stack? The simple answer is no more than 6. The sweet spot is 3 to 5 players from the same team. When you add a week 17 opponent to the mix, this is considered a game stack. We also refer to this as a “bring back”. You’d say, I stacked three Colts and brought back a Raiders WR. If you can make his happen without giving up too much average draft position to reach for it, you should definitely do it. Mike

What teams to stack? The easy answer is players from a high-powered offense. Especially one that people are sleeping on. In 2022, people who stacked the Eagles did very well because they got a great value on most of those players. If you look at where they were drafted in 2022 versus 2023, it’s impressive. So who is going to do that this year? Aside from the big three (Bills, Chiefs, and Eagles), I am stacking the Bengals, Ravens, Chargers, Jaguars, and the Saints as dark horses because they have one of the easiest schedules in the league. Every once in a while I will throw in a Packers stack too because they have an easy schedule but I am hesitant on Jordan Love. If you think Love is going to be great, this is a team you can stack for fairly cheap compared to the rest I just listed.

Another answer to what teams to stack is…teams with a good week 17 schedule. This is the championship week and if you made it that far, you want to increase your chances of winning. Look at the week 17 schedule and think what game would you stack in DFS that week? Find a game you like and snag some players from both teams. Typically you’d want two or three players from one team, and one from the other in a normal DFS week, but since so much changes between now and week 17, adding another player or two for safety may not be a bad idea. Right now, many people are stacking the CIN @ KC game for good reason, but I have a few others for you to think about. To win, you need to get different from the field of contestants. So if everyone is stacking CIN @ KC, you can pivot to a few different options.

These two games are in domes and have the chance at being a shoot-out: DET @ DAL and GB @ MIN. I also like the CAR @ JAC game because I have a feeling Jacksonville is going to put up some numbers and CAR will get some garbage time. A lot of people like PIT @ SEA, which I agree with. The one I am hitting the most is LAC @ DEN. I am all in on the Chargers this year.

You may be asking why wouldn’t you want to stack weeks 15 and 16 too. It’s a solid question. Those two weeks are critical and part of the playoffs, but they are a much smaller pairing than week 17, as we referenced in part 1. If you’re going to stack one of the weeks, week 17 is one where you’ll need an edge to move up the ranks of a much larger group. That said, if you can add week 15 and 16 opponents to your main stack, along with 17, then you should totally do it!

Rankings

Before I end, I want to mention player rankings and why I didn’t include them as a main strategy in this series. Player rankings matter, but all the best ball sites show rankings and average draft positions, so everyone has an idea of who goes when. That doesn’t mean you just draft whoever is ranked highest, I know finding sleepers and value picks in fantasy football is one way to succeed in fantasy. To me, it’s more of a personal thing.

In closing…use the info I’ve provided in this series as guides and tie-breakers for when you draft and can’t make up your mind. Be flexible. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t get the best stack or the best draft value. Look online at some completed drafts and see what others are doing. Feel free to reach out to me, I’ll gladly share some of mine.

Best of luck!

Article written by Ryan Baker aka Primetime Playaz