Best NFL DFS Stacks, Week 1: Lineup Picks for DraftKings & FanDuel

Week 1 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 to double your chances of a big score if that team does well. This is a strategy that is especially useful in games with high over unders. 

While you can 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 his pass catchers. 

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.

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.

Get an in-depth fantasy preview for every game with Rich Hribar's Week 1 Worksheets!

Week 1 NFL DFS Stacks & Picks for DraftKings, FanDuel

Without further ado, here are some of the best DFS stack options for Week 1 of the 2025 NFL season:

QB Joe Flacco ($4,900) & TE David Njoku ($4,700), Browns vs. Bengals

• Combined Price: $9,600 – 19.2% of lineup salary

It will be the recurring theme this season: If a quarterback is playing against the Bengals, we will be interested in playing that player in DFS.

The Bengals defense was one of six teams last season to allow 20 points per game to opposing quarterbacks.

Along with that, they were tied with a league-high four games of allowing 30 or more points to the position.

Not everything translates from one season to another, but the Bengals did not do enough in the offseason to suggest that those numbers will drastically change.

In terms of Joe Flacco, this is not a quarterback on a new team that needs to learn the offense.

Two years ago, Flacco played in this Kevin Stefanski offense, and he did well.

In his five games in this Browns offense in 2023, Flacco averaged 20.18 points.

In three of those games, the veteran quarterback threw 3 touchdowns.

You could just as easily stack Flacco with Jerry Jeudy at $5,400, but I will save $700 and play David Njoku.

While we already touched on the Bengals defense, they were especially bad against opposing tight ends.

They allowed a league-high 16.6 points per game, including six games of 20 or more points.

Njoku had his second-best game of the season last season against the Bengals when he scored 23.6 points.

In terms of the Flacco and Njoku connection, the Browns tight end was targeted at least 6 times in four of five games and averaged 18.2 points.

QB Brock Purdy ($6,200) & WR Ricky Pearsall ($4,500), 49ers vs Seahawks

• Combined Price: $10,700 – 21.4% of lineup salary

The 49ers are opening up the season at home against the Seahawks, a favorable opponent for Brock Purdy.

The 49ers quarterback has averaged 18.18 points in his five games against his division rival.

He has also had 1,208 career passing yards in those games, the most against any other opponent.

In terms of passing catching options, I will take advantage of the point per reception in DraftKings and go with Ricky Pearsall.

Pearsall has had a full offseason to build a connection with Purdy.

Important to note that in building that connection, the two of them got together to run routes before team activities.

While Purdy did not play in the season finale last year, Pearsall showed signs of life in this 49ers offense during the

final two games of the season.
Pearsall was targeted at least 6 times in both games, averaging 105 yards receiving and scoring a touchdown in each game.

You couple those things with Brandon Aiyuk on the IR, Jauan Jennings just getting back to practice, and Christian McCaffrey popping up on the injury report, and Pearsall has a chance to be the most targeted 49er this weekend.

While the Seahawks should improve in a second season with a defensive minded head coach, the defense did allow the 12th most points to wide receivers.

QB Bryce Young ($5,700) & WR Tetairoa McMillan ($5,200), Panthers @ Jaguars

• Combined Price: $10,900 – 21.8% of lineup salary

The benefit of playing Bryce Young is that he is unlikely to be heavily rostered in Week 1.

What is appealing about Young is the second half of last season.

Young did not have a top 12 week until Week 12.

In the seven games before that, he averaged an anemic 7.1 points per game.

From that week on, things changed drastically for Young as he averaged 20.7 points the rest of the season.

This signaled that Young was getting more comfortable in Dave Canales’ offense.

Then we get to Tetairoa McMillan, who should be in line for a strong target share.

The Panthers traded Adam Thielen to the Vikings and placed Jalen Coker on the IR

Along with there not being as many bodies in the wide receiver room, let’s not forget that McMillan was the No. 8 overall pick in the NFL draft.

In terms of the Jaguars, their defense allowed the fourth-most points to the position last season.

Along with that, their defense had a league-high of three games with 60 more points allowed to wide receivers.

This has been a recurring theme for them as they are the only team to be inside the top 10 in points allowed to wide receivers over the last three years.

We are also looking at a Jaguars defense that had the second-highest touchdown-to-interception ratio allowed last season, with 4.8.

QB Trevor Lawrence ($5,300) & WR Brian Thomas Jr. ($6,800), Jaguars vs Panthers

• Combined Price: $12,100 – 24.2% of lineup salary

While Trevor Lawrence is one of the heavily rostered quarterbacks in DFS this weekend, I felt compelled to include him in my picks.

If you can get through the fog of people labeling Lawrence as overrated, justifiably so, he now has a head coach who had Baker Mayfield scoring 20 or more fantasy points in double-digit games last season.

Along with the change in head coach, Lawrence is tied with Sam Darnold as the 16th-highest priced quarterback this week.

He is even cheaper than Justin Fields, who has a far tougher opponent in the Steelers.

His low price allows you to drop $6,800 on Brian Thomas Jr.

While Thomas will be competing for targets with Travis Hunter, it is hard to worry too much, given what he was able to put together last season.

In his rookie season, Thomas finished as the WR4 and posted six games with at least 20 fantasy points scored.

What is even more impressive is that Thomas is the first wide receiver since 2021 to finish as a top-five wide receiver in PPR formats to have fewer than 100 catches.

Lawrence and Thomas will go up against a Panthers defense that allowed a league-high 35 passing touchdowns last season.

Thanks to those efforts, the Panthers went from allowing the fewest points to quarterbacks in 2023 to the most this past season.