Finding The Right DFS Stack: Week 2

Each week we'll be using the tools available at Sharp Football Stats to find the best stacks for DFS rosters.

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We had an exciting first week of the season with a couple of hits, including a nearly 50-point performance from Sammy Watkins. The Zay Jones love is officially over now that John Brown is in town. We’re on to this week’s main slate, though. There are plenty of games that seem like obvious candidates for stacking. Miami was just steamrolled by Baltimore and has New England coming to town, among others. Fitting as many Patriots in a lineup as you can is likely the flavor of the week, so we’re not going to touch that one. 

Game Stack

The Saints-Rams game is ripe for the picking this week. It features the highest over/under of any game on the slate at 53. If the spread of -2.5 holds, the game should be back and forth. When the game was within a score in 2018, Los Angeles and New Orleans passed right around league average at 58% and 57%, respectively. 

Los Angeles is back at home, where Jared Goff ($5,900) performs much better. He averages 8.5 YPA at home compared to 7.2 YPA on the road. That number goes up even higher when Cooper Kupp ($6,000) is in the lineup. With Robert Woods ($6,400) and Brandin Cooks ($6,300) right there around the same price on DK, we could – and typically do – see ownership spread among the three top options. Cooks will potentially see a lot of Marshon Lattimore on Sunday. Woods and Kupp saw 13 and 10 targets, respectively, last week so I don’t think you can go wrong either way there, though I do lean Kupp. 

To make this a proper game stack, we need to run it back with someone from the Saints. This Rams offense just gave up 45.9 DK Points to Christian McCaffrey. He rushed for 128 yards and two scores while adding 10 receptions for 81 yards. If only there was a dual-threat running back for New Orleans… Alvin Kamara ($8,200) is the fourth most expensive RB on the main slate and will see quite a bit of ownership. Playing Goff with two of his receivers — preferably Kupp and Woods — and then running it back with Kamara will give you a different build for GPPs than a lot of your competitors will have. 

Traditional Stack

Dallas looked like they had an actual, functioning offense for the first time in a long time in Week 1. Kellen Moore had the Cowboys line up in 11 Personnel on 73% of the snaps against the Giants on Sunday. Michael Gallup ($5,600) caught all seven of his targets on Sunday as he went for 158 yards. 

He was exceptional everywhere that he was targeted. Dak Prescott ($6,300) dropped 36.4 DK Points on the day as the Cowboys scored 35 points. He looked sharp, completing 78% of his passes and posting a perfect passer rating. 

There are two probable outcomes for this game, and they both are positive situations for Prescott and Gallup. If they build a lead and sustain it as they did against the Giants last week, then we could see similar pass volume. Nobody would argue with another seven targets at $5,600 for Gallup. Or, Washington pushes the Cowboys — as they did against the Eagles last week — and Dallas is forced to throw even more than expected. 

Contrarian Stack

In DFS, we want opportunities. Volume is the name of the game and that’s what we’re going to get from Arizona week in and week out. The Cardinals are only implied to score 17 points but they are getting 13 points on the spread. Arizona was the fastest team in situational pace of play during Week 1. 

Not only did they play fast, but they also ran plays out of 10 personnel 67% of the time. For reference, the next highest team was the Rams, who lined up with four wide receivers 21% of the time, while no other team in the league called that formation more than 8% of the time. 

We saw a floor game for the Cardinals this past weekend. They looked lost at times but Kyler Murray ($5,400) managed to score 25.6 DK Points. Many times with young, mobile quarterbacks we see a reliance on rushing to hit their floor in weeks they don’t quite have it. Murray only scored 1.3 points on the ground. If he shows any desire to scramble a bit, he’s firmly in play at his price. We saw a quartet of receivers that earned seven or more targets. Christian Kirk ($4,500) is my favorite target to pair with Murray this week against Baltimore. 

Ravens star cornerback Jimmy Smith is out multiple weeks so there will be less resistance from that secondary. Kirk was targeted a dozen times against the Lions. He only managed to turn those targets into 10.4 DK Points, but if he continues to see that target share he will make someone quite a bit of money at some point soon. 

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