Each week, we use the free tools at Sharp Football Stats to identify the best DFS stacks.
We’re going to start off a little bit differently this week and take a look at pace. There are people around the industry doing great work with pace but in DFS it still feels a little bit like an undiscovered frontier. There are reasons that teams speed up or slow down that are dependent on a given game environment but looking at the past month compared to the first 10 weeks of the season can give us some insight into how teams are playing now.
Looking through these splits can give us an idea of teams we should be targeting and those that should be avoided. The biggest movers towards faster pace are:
- Tampa Bay (from 16th to 2nd)
- Washington (from 32nd to 11th)
- Tennessee (from 25th to 15th)
- Buffalo (from 21st to 4th)
On the other end of the spectrum, we have some teams that are actively trying to slow things down. Those teams are:
- Baltimore (from 22nd to 32nd)
- Denver (from 15th to 28th)
- New York Giants (from 10th to 25th)
Unfortunately, many of the teams that are speeding up, aren’t necessarily teams we want to stack up in GPPs. But, grabbing pieces of those offenses as one-off plays in lineups with the stacks we’re going to outline here could be a profitable strategy this week.
Game Stack
Two teams that are in the top half of the league in pace and facing off against each other are the Jets and Dolphins. The spread has the Jets favored at home by five points.
Devante Parker ($6,900) has been both the most efficient and most heavily targeted option in the Dolphins passing offense for a month now. He’s seen 41 of Ryan Fitzpatrick’s ($6,000) YOLO balls. Over that span, 26% of Parker’s targets have been deep balls. The Jets have been susceptible to the deep ball, allowing 95+ passer ratings to each deep section of the field.
If you want to bring it back, Robby Anderson ($5,100) is the obvious choice. He hasn’t seen the volume that somebody like Parker has seen for a long stretch but they seem to be making the effort to get him the ball last week.
He saw 10 of Sam Darnold’s ($6,000) targets in Week 13. Jamison Crowder ($5,300) saw nine targets, but literally had 8 yards because of his low aDOT and the fact that he only caught two of those passes. We want the deep balls and high ceiling that comes along with Anderson if we’re going to put up big numbers in a GPP this weekend.
Game Stack #2
It’s impossible not to like the Patriots-Chiefs game this week from a fantasy perspective. Julian Edelman ($7,100) is firmly in play this week — and every week. He’s seen double-digit targets in 9-of-12 games, including each of the last seven. In the Patriots’ passing attack, there’s Edelman and then everybody else.
Tom Brady ($6,100) will see little to no ownership this week, but I think that’s a mistake. This game has shootout written all over it. Brady’s thrown over 30 passes in 11-of-12 games, including 10 straight. It’s always a matter of how the touchdowns come with New England. When Brady gets his passing touchdowns, though, he can break a slate.
On the way back, I prefer Travis Kelce ($6,200). As the most expensive tight end, you’ll likely see an ownership discount. It hasn’t all clicked very often for Kelce this year, but his ceiling still remains high. With people drawn to the Jack Doyles and Mike Gesickis of the world, Kelce could be great leverage at the position.
QB-RB Stack
I’m just going to continue to bang the drum for stacking Lamar Jackson ($7,400) and Mark Ingram ($5,900). The Buffalo Bills allow explosive runs at the second-highest rate in the league.
If you’ve been living under a rock this season, you might not know the Ravens have done reasonably well in the run game.
Ingram is always going to be a touchdown dependant player, but if the Bills can be gashed, he’s going to find a way to do it. His floor is a bit lower because of the lack of passing game usage. Ingram hasn’t seen more than four targets in a single game this season. It isn’t a cash play, but this stack will be low-owned in GPPs. If Ingram finds his way into the end zone a couple of times, it will pay off quite nicely.