4 NFL FanDuel Stacks for Week 13
Stacks fuel upside in FanDuel contests. To that point, colleague Brandon Gdula took a deep dive into hit rates and correlation for stacks. It's worth a read.
Every week, I'll lay out my four favorite stacks in this space. Here are the stacks I'm honing in on this week.
Las Vegas Raiders
Derek Carr ($7,500), DeSean Jackson ($5,200), and Foster Moreau ($5,000)
I gushed about Carr and Moreau earlier this week in my value plays article. If you read that piece, you might have thought stacking the two together would be a stellar move. You're correct.
After a few weeks of struggling to adjust to an offense without field-stretcher Henry Ruggs, Carr got back on track with a new vertical wideout opening up the passing attack -- more on the player in question to come. However, since there's a tangible reason for Carr's mid-season stumble, I believe last week and his early-season performance are better measuring sticks for expectations from now on.
Even including his poor games, he's first in passing yards per game (310.4), so the overall results have been good. Meanwhile, Moreau is likely to step in for a banged-up Darren Waller. When he did so in Week 7, Moreau played 95.65 percent of the Las Vegas Raiders' offensive snaps. In addition, according to Pro Football Focus, he was tied for second on the team in routes (30), parlaying them into six receptions for 60 receiving yards and a touchdown.
Moreau's athletic profile is eye-catching. Per Player Profiler, the third-year tight end has an 82nd-percentile 40-yard dash time, 83rd-percentile speed score, 83rd-percentile speed score, 87th-percentile agility score, 90th-percent catch radius, and 93rd percentile SPARQ-X score. Moreau's athleticism lends itself well to the young tight end performing as a Waller-lite this week.
Finally, D-Jax is the home-run wideout I teased above. Last week, he ran a season-high 24 routes, turning his usage into three receptions for 102 receiving yards and a touchdown. Unfortunately, his health needs to be monitored. Jackson didn't participate in practice on Thursday. However, he downplayed the injury, calling it "not too serious."
The Vegas passing game benefits from facing the Washington Football Team. According to our power rankings, Washington's pass defense ranks second-worst this season. This is a high-upside three-man stack that fits well in GPPs.
Las Vegas Raiders vs. Washington Football Team
Foster Moreau ($5,000) and Antonio Gibson ($6,200)
Is this cheating? Maybe. Still, I love this game's potential to turn into a shootout, making Gibson an excellent bring-back option with the three-person stack above or with Moreau as mini-stack. According to our heat map, the game's spread is only 2.5 points in favor of the Raiders.
Thus, the game script should be neutral, allowing Washington to stick to their recent trend of force-feeding Gibson. He has carried the rock 72 times for 260 and 2 touchdowns in three games since Washington's Week 9 bye. It's helped WFT win three in a row.
In addition, Gibson might not be as game-script-dependent as usual this week. Last week, he reeled in all seven of his targets for 35 yards. In Week 12, J.D. McKissic suffered a concussion, and he hasn't been cleared to practice. Assuming McKissic is out, Gibson's floor and ceiling are elevated with a potential enhanced passing-game role.
Understandably, Gibson is a darling in our projections, netting the highest point-per-dollar value score among running backs on FanDuel's main slate. Stacking Moreau and Gibson is an excellent strategy in cash games and GPPs.
Indianapolis Colts
Jonathan Taylor ($10,500) and Indianapolis D/ST ($4,500)
Taylor is in a prime position to continue his dominance. The second-year back has rushed for the second-most yards per game (100.4) and the most touchdowns (14) this year. Also, he has added 3.0 receptions per game, 28.0 receiving yards per week, and two total receiving touchdowns to his bottom line in 2021. Taylor's undoubtedly an exceptional talent at running back.
Plus, according to Football Outsiders, the Indianapolis Colts are seventh in adjusted line yards. The combination of Taylor's elite talent and Indy's good run-blocking line has produced excellent results.
Meanwhile, the Houston Texans have the 11th-worst run defense by our metrics. Running backs have drilled the Texans for 4.79 yards per rush attempt. It's easy to understand why we project Taylor as the RB1 for this slate, and despite his lofty salary, we rank him as the third-best point-per-dollar play.
The Colts' defense is in a smash spot, too. Indy is a 10.0-point road favorite and is facing a quarterback that takes sacks at a high rate. Tyrod Taylor's 7.4 percent sack rate would tie for the ninth-highest mark among qualified quarterbacks if he qualified.
If the Colts clobber the Texans, Taylor should get fed in a positive game script, and the defense will have ample opportunities to pin their ears back and pile up sacks.
Cincinnati Bengals vs. Los Angeles Chargers
Joe Mixon ($9,400) and Mike Williams ($6,500)
Taylor isn't the only back running roughshod over the league. Mixon is cooking with gas, stringing together an eight-game touchdown streak, including four straight outings with two touchdowns. He's rumbled for 123 rushing yards and 165 rushing yards in the past two weeks.
Now he has the most desirable matchup for rushing the ball. The Los Angeles Chargers are dead last in run defense, per our metrics. They've yielded the most rushing yards (1,336) to running backs in 2021-- at a blistering 4.64 yards per rush attempt.
The game script should be good for Mixon, too, as the Cincinnati Bengals are 3.0-point favorites at home against the cross country-traveling Chargers. We project Mixon to score the fourth-most points among backs on FanDuel's main slate.
On the flip side, Williams is an attractive bring-back option. The fifth-year pro exhibited his sky-high ceiling in the Chargers' first five games. Then, unfortunately, he hit the skids for a few weeks after his average depth of target exploded. Thankfully, his average target depth has settled in at 8.4 yards downfield since Week 9, according to Pro Football Focus.
The modest target depth has allowed him to haul in four, five, and four receptions in the previous three games. However, he fell short of 40 yards in two of those games. But in Week 11, he popped off for five receptions, 97 yards, and one touchdown. Williams' current target depth is closer to his early-season mark -- when he was balling out -- rather than his clip from his mid-season slump. As a result, I'm optimistic about his odds of a blow-up performance.
While Williams isn't a safe pick during his rollercoaster campaign, his upside plants him firmly in my mix of GPP wideouts.
Joshua Shepardson is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Joshua Shepardson also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username bchad50. 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.
