The Divisional Round 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.
Divisional Round NFL DFS Stacks & Picks for DraftKings, FanDuel
Without further ado, here are some of the best DFS stack options for the Divisional Round of the 2022 NFL season:
QB Trevor Lawrence ($6,000) & WR Christian Kirk ($6,000), Jaguars vs Chiefs
- Combined Price: $12,000 – 24% of lineup salary
For the second week in a row, I will be nominating the Jaguars duo of Trevor Lawrence and Christian Kirk as a stack worth investing in.
Despite throwing four interceptions last week, Lawrence still finished with 26.32 points scored.
Their win against the Chargers proved to be the fifth time this season that Lawrence has thrown for three or more touchdowns. The intriguing thing about those five games is that four of them occurred after Week 11.
Then there is Kirk who has continued to be a force in the Jaguars’ passing game. Kirk benefited from Lawrence’s big second half last as he hauled in eight of 14 targets for 78 yards and a touchdown.
That performance was good enough for Kirk to finish sixth among wide receivers in fantasy points with 21.8.
While the Chiefs are the number one seed in the AFC, their defense has shown to be a weakness, again. During the regular season, the Chiefs defense allowed the fourth-most points to the quarterback position.
Included in that is the Chiefs allowing a league-high 33 touchdown passes this season. Allowing that many touchdown passes, it should come as no surprise that their defense allowed opposing quarterbacks to score more than 20 points in 64.7% percent of their games.
The Jaguars will have an opportunity to have sustained drives as the Chiefs defense is sixth in the NFL allowing 12.2 passing first downs on a per-game basis.
This weekend could be the end of the Jaguars season but I expect them to go out with a fantasy football bang.
QB Patrick Mahomes ($8,000) & TE Travis Kelce ($7,700), Chiefs vs Jaguars
- Combined Price: $15,700 – 31.4% of lineup salary
As mentioned earlier, this week I was going to include stacks other than the wide receiver position. With that in mind, look no further than the high-priced stack of Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce.
Endorsing Mahomes in an article truly writes itself. This season, on top of 41 touchdown passes, the Chiefs signal caller had a career-high 5,250 passing yards.
It is just his regular season numbers that have Mahomes as a hot commodity. In 11 postseason games, the star quarterback has a touchdown percentage of 6.6% per snap.
That is even better than his 2022 regular season touchdown percentage of 6.4%.
Speaking of those postseason touchdown passes, since 2017, Kelce has hauled in 12 of Mahomes 28 postseason touchdown passes.
Much like the regular season, Kelce is relied upon heavily during the playoffs. In six games over the last two years, the Chiefs tight end has averaged 11 targets per game.
While the combined price tag of $15,700 seems steep, it is hard to ignore the consistent opportunities that Kelce receives.
In terms of the Jaguars, their defense is allowing the eighth most points to tight ends this season.
Included in that is the Jaguars being one of just six teams to allow over 1,000 receiving yards to the position.
Last week, the Jaguars allowed Gerald Everett to score 25.9 points. Those points consisted of Everett being targeted eight times with six catches for 109 yards and a touchdown.
Imagine those numbers but with even more opportunity. The DFS sky’s the limit for Mahomes and Kelce.
QB Joe Burrow ($6,500) & WR Ja’Marr Chase ($7,800), Bengals vs Bills
- Combined Price: $14,300 – 28.5% of lineup salary
This weekend, the Bengals and Bills will collide in what should be a high-scoring affair. Look for Joe Burrow and Ja’Marr Chase to be at the forefront of DFS opportunities.
Last week might have seemed like a lackluster fantasy week for Burrow but most games he plays against the Ravens this season are.
There have been six games in which Burrow threw one touchdown, three of those games against the Ravens.
Despite the Bengals and Bills being in the top five in fewest points allowed to opposing quarterbacks, Vegas has this matchup sitting with an over-under of 48.5 points.
The Bengals have an implied point total of 21.5. The intriguing thing about that is in the 12 games the Bengals have scored 20 points or more, Burrow has score 20 or more points eight times.
In spite of the Bills being in the top five of fewest points allowed to quarterbacks, they have allowed the thirteenth most to the wide receiver position.
This bodes well for Chase who finished 10th in wide receiver fantasy points, while playing in just 12 games.
The Bengals’ star pass catcher has had five games with 20 points or more and just one game with less than 12 points.
What will also bode well for the Bengals stack is the Bills allowing the fifth most passing yards per game when they are playing at home.
While extremely unfortunate circumstances canceled their Week 17 matchup, expect the Bengals and Bills to go on as expected, in a blow-for-blow that will be littered with fantasy points.
