4 NFL FanDuel Stacks for Week 2
When stacking players in your daily fantasy sports (DFS) lineups, you’re looking to create the highest ceiling possible within those groups of players from the same team or game.
Often times stacking players is going to result in either a lot of fantasy points or very few fantasy points. Finding the right combination of players is the hardest part of creating stacks, but in doing so, you create high-variance plays that can shoot your lineup to the top of a prize pool.
In this article, I will reflect my favorite DFS stacks for this week. These decisions are made by using player projections, Vegas implied team totals and player ownership projections.
Pittsburgh Steelers
Ben Roethlisberger ($7,600) and JuJu Smith-Schuster ($8,100)
After taking an excruciating beating in Week 1 versus the New England Patriots, the Pittsburgh Steelers will look to bounce back at home this week against the Seattle Seahawks The Steelers are currently listed as a 4.0-point favorite in this game and have an implied total of 25.5 points, which is the seventh-highest implied total in Week 2. They’ll look for Roethlisberger to put this offense back on track, after scoring just 3 points in their Week 1 affair against the Patriots.
Roethlisberger has historically been a much better quarterback when playing at home versus on the road. Since 2014, Roethlisberger has averaged 24.0 fantasy points per game at home, compared to just 14.7 fantasy points per game on the road, per PFF. Roethlisberger’s 13 highest-scoring performances -- in terms of fantasy football -- have all come at home.
He’ll face off against a Seahawks defense that allowed for Andy Dalton to throw for 418 yards and two touchdowns against them in Week 1, and that one was in Seattle. I like stacking up Roethlisberger this week with his receiver, JuJu Smith-Schuster. Smith-Schuster is battling a toe injury but looks on track to play in Week 2.
Per our fantasy projections, we have Smith-Schuster projected to score the second-most points of any wide receiver in Week 2, at 15.55 FanDuel points.
Baltimore Ravens
Lamar Jackson ($8,200) and Mark Andrews ($6,100)
Yes, you could see how I’m chasing here a bit after the Baltimore Ravens smashed the Miami Dolphins on the road in Week 1, but this matchup for Jackson and Andrews is just too good to pass up this week.
They’ll take on the Arizona Cardinals at home as 13.0-point favorites. While I don’t expect Jackson to throw for five touchdowns or have a 1.41 Passing Net Expected Points (NEP) per drop back again this week, he does have another soft matchup against a Cardinals secondary that ranks fifth-worst against the pass, per our numbers.
Stacking up Jackson with his tight end, Mark Andrews, makes a lot of sense against a Cardinals defense that surrendered a line of six catches, 131 receiving yards and one touchdown to Detroit Lions rookie tight end T.J. Hockenson last week. That was the second-highest fantasy points total for any tight end in Week 1.
Andrew is coming off a career game last week, where he had 8 catches, 108 receiving yards and one touchdown, and I think he can duplicate that type of outing again this week against a porous Cardinals defense.
We currently have Jackson projected to score the second-most fantasy points among quarterback (22.52 FanDuel points) and have Andrews projected to be the fifth-highest scoring tight end in Week 2 (9.10 FanDuel points).
Kansas City Chiefs and Oakland Raiders
Patrick Mahomes ($9,000), Sammy Watkins ($7,400), Travis Kelce ($8,000) and Josh Jacobs ($6,500)
Another week, another Patrick Mahomes stack. This is a trend you’ll likely see throughout the season -- and rightfully so.
After all the talk of regressing in 2019 following his historical season, Mahomes came out flying in Week 1 against a Jacksonville D that is considered to be one of the league's best. He threw 378 yards and three touchdowns against the Jaguars and did so without his number-one wide receiver, Tyreek Hill, for most of the game.
Mahomes should pick up right where he left off last week as he’s projected to be our top-scoring quarterback in Week 2 (23.92 FanDuel points). In his two meetings against the Oakland Raiders last season, Mahomes threw for a total of 576 yards and six touchdowns. Stacking him up with Watkins this week makes a lot of sense, as Sammy will be taking over as the number-one receiver gig for the Chiefs with Hill out for the next few weeks. Watkins is coming off a career game last week, where he had 9 catches, 198 receiving yards and three touchdowns.
You can also run a double-stack in this game by adding Kelce with Mahomes and Watkins. There should be plenty of points to go around for the Chiefs, who have an implied total of 30.0. Kelce is essentially matchup proof on a week-to-week basis, but the Raiders announced this week that they put starting safety Johnathan Abram on IR, which only boosts Kelce’s potential. Kelce lit up the Raiders last season in the two games they played, amassing a combined 17 catches, 230 receiving yards and two touchdowns.
If you want to run it back with a player from the Raiders, Josh Jacobs is going to be your guy. Since salaries for Week 2 came out before Jacobs' stellar Monday night performance, he's far too cheap on FanDuel this week after posting 100 yards from scrimmage and two rushing touchdowns in his debut.
We have him projected to score the 12th-most points this week (14.30) among running backs, but he's priced on FanDuel as the 19th-highest running back. You’re getting tremendous value out of Jacobs at that price. The only fear here is that he may lose some snaps to Jalen Richard if the Raiders get in a huge hole.
Los Angeles Rams and New Orleans Saints
Jared Goff ($7,600), Cooper Kupp ($6,800), Alvin Kamara ($8,700) and Michael Thomas ($8,500)
My favorite game stack this week is the New Orleans Saints versus Los Angeles Rams. It's a rematch of last year’s NFC Championship Game, which ended on a missed pass interference call that would have likely sent the Saints to the Super Bowl. The Saints will get their first crack at revenge this week when they head to Los Angeles to play the Rams.
This game has shootout written all over it, and you could really stack this game several different ways. My favorite way is to stack two players from each team.
On the Rams' side, I like pairing Jared Goff with wideout Cooper Kupp. Goff is a great quarterback to target anytime he’s playing at home. In 2018, Goff threw for 2,737 yards and 22 touchdowns when playing in LA, compared to throwing for 1,951 yards and 10 touchdowns while on the road. The Rams have an implied total of 27.0 points in this game, and Goff should be a big contributor in reaching that total.
For Kupp, while he didn’t play in the NFC Championship game last season due to an ACL injury, he did play when these two teams met up in Week 9 of the regular season. In that game, he had five catches, 89 yards and one touchdown. He’s my favorite Rams receiver this week, as he’ll likely matchup against Saints slot cornerback, P.J. Williams, who was ranked 158 of 204 cornerbacks in 2018, per PFF.
On the Saints' side, I like reaching right for their star players, Kamara and Thomas. The Saints' offensive game plan is tailored around these two, and should the Saints walk away with a win this week, they’ll likely be the reason why.
Kamara is projected to be the third-highest scoring running back on the main slate (19.75 FanDuel points), per our models, while Thomas is projected to be the highest-scoring wide receiver (16.43 FanDuel points). In their two games against the Rams in 2018, Kamara and Thomas combined for a total of 474 rushing/receiving yards and four touchdowns.
Griffin Swanson is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Griffin Swanson also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username GriffDogg_. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel. (edited)
