There's a lot of chatter about planning for the playoffs in large-field best ball contests. The idea is that if you advance to the playoffs, you want to be positioned to have your best weeks over that stretch so you can not only make the finals but post a big score in Week 17 when it really counts.
A great way of positioning yourself for that is to have correlating pieces for a given matchup via stacks and bring-backs. The Week 17 maximalists have already circled a handful of games from that week as the best ones to be leveraged this season. But you have to get to Week 17 for it to matter, so having game stacks in Weeks 15 and 16 is also a good idea.
We've created a game-stacking tool to help you figure it all out. The Game Stack Draft Board tool below shows the players by draft slot who are suitable for stacking from specific games.
- Click the "Week" dropdown
- Choose Week 14 (last week of the regular season in case your team needs that extra nudge to get out of the first round of the tournament and into the playoffs) Week 15, 16 or 17.
- Click the "Select a game ..." dropdown to choose a specific game.
- Voila! You'll see a draft board with players from that game.
- From there, you can toggle to whichever draft slot you like to help visualize the best pick to pull off the game stack.
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Being over-committed to any single Week 17 matchup across your portfolio can be detrimental. I always come back to last year's Chiefs-Broncos game as an example of a game stack that drafters were proud to show off in summer, only for that to be one of the ugliest games of the entire season. I mean, the Saints-Titans(!) game had 60 points in Week 17 last year while Eagles-Bills had 25. Being so sure that one game is going to pop in January when you're drafting in July is hubris. A fool's errand. You miss the forest for the trees.
But shaping your draft in a way that can help you squeeze the most out of a given game is a good idea.
The point of this tool is to easily visualize where you can get correlating pieces to add to your roster to set yourself up for playoff success. Some sickos out there have memorized the Week 17 slate already, but you don't have to do that. This tool has all 48 playoff matchups loaded and ready to be examined.
Now, let's look at the best games to stack during the fantasy playoffs. Odds from DraftKings Sportsbook.
Week 15
Here are the highest totals from Week 15:
Cowboys-Rams is difficult to stack but not impossible. A Puka Nacua/George Pickens start is doable from the No. 4 or 5 draft slot, and either Kyren Williams or Javonte Williams should be available in the third or fourth rounds. Both quarterbacks can be had later in the draft, which is nice. And both offenses have nice tertiary pieces that could have some real value come playoff time like Ryan Flournoy or the Fergusons (Jake Ferguson or Terrance Ferguson).
It's a lot of capital to sink into one game, and it would take some reaching, which we don't love, but as a general principle, these are two good offenses to load up on this year.
Bears-Bills has some spice to it despite being a cold-weather game, checking in with a 51.5 O/U. Unfortunately, a lot of the main characters are drafted on opposite sides of the board. Again, these are offenses we want shares of this year, but planning for this game specifically could be more trouble than it's worth.
Oddly enough, the Jets-Cardinals game might just be so bad that it's good. If you draw the No. 4 draft slot, it's possible to get some combination of Jeremiyah Love (slight reach from ADP), Breece Hall, Trey McBride and Garrett Wilson in the opening stanza. The quarterbacks are cheap ways to complete the stacks late in drafts, as well as some other interesting late pieces like Omar Cooper or Kenyon Sadiq.
The Broncos-Raiders game has some appeal. If you draw a late-first draft slot, it lines up nicely to get Ashton Jeanty, Courtland Sutton, RJ Harvey and/or Bo Nix. An earlier draft slot would position you for Brock Bowers, Jaylen Waddle, J.K. Dobbins and Jalen Nailor without having to deviate much from ADP.
Honorable mention is 49ers-Chargers. A draft slot of 4 or 7 would set you up well to have plenty of exposure to these offenses.
Stay on top of players values as draft season heats up with updated fantasy news and RotoWire's NFL depth charts.
Week 16
Here are the highest totals for Week 16:
Bengals-Colts has a lot going for it, especially if you draw a mid-round draft slot and start with a Jonathan Taylor/Chase Brown duo. Tee Higgins may or may not be available in the third depending on what the Ja'Marr Chase team does, but after that you have a bevy of options that fit your draft slot, be it Tyler Warren, Joe Burrow, Alec Pierce or Josh Downs.
49ers-Chiefs is fun if you draw an earlier draft slot. You may miss out on the premium players like Christian McCaffrey and Kenneth Walker, but you're set up nicely to build a solid foundation elsewhere, then wrap around and stockpile picks from this game. Nabbing Rashee Rice and/or Mike Evans followed by either Patrick Mahomes or Brock Purdy plus Travis Kelce or George Kittle is a plausible outcome in any given draft room considering the current ADP.
I'm a little light on Chiefs and 49ers in my portfolio, and this would be a way of addressing that in a single draft.
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Week 17
Here we go. This is the week that makes millionaires. The popular games to target include Ravens at Bengals on TNF (51.5), Lions at Bears (49.5), Rams at Buccaneers (48.5), Commanders at Jaguars (48.5) and Bills at Dolphins (47.5).
Bills-Dolphins stands out for a number of reasons. It's a divisional game (meaning you get two bites at this matchup popping this season) and, crucially, this game is in Miami. If this were played in Buffalo in early January, the Miami side of this game would likely be DOA. And it's easy to acquire pieces from this game in a draft.
The Bills have the sixth-highest Vegas implied total according to the oddsmakers, but there's a steep cliff in this offense once you get past DJ Moore in the sixth round. Players like Khalil Shakir and Dalton Kincaid can be had in the 10th round
And an end-of-the-first-round draft slot like 11 or 12 would allow you to grab James Cook and De'Von Achane with ease (I'm admittedly higher on Achane than the market). Taking a quarterback in the third round is a steep price tag, but Josh Allen is worth it in this context if you've already gotten the first two pieces out of the way. You can take the next six rounds to address other parts of your roster before coming back around to, ideally, Malik Willis. By going Willis there, you are sacrificing a pass-catching component for Allen, but you're also locking in what projects to be the bulk of Miami's offensive production.
You can land the plane with Greg Dulcich or whichever Miami receiver you've convinced yourself is worth picking toward the end of the draft.
Raiders-Cardinals is another interesting one. I wrote about both teams in the Vegas implied odds vs. ADP article, noting that the oddsmakers are bearish on both offenses but the fantasy community is unfazed. We're still picking four combined players from these teams in the first 30 picks.
This one's a little hard to pull off at the top but not impossible; Ashton Jeanty-Trey McBride is a workable start with two of your first three picks. Brock Bowers and Jeremiyah Love is a little trickier at current ADP; you'd likely need an early draft slot (1-3) and hope that Bowers slips to your second pick before grabbing Love coming back around.
From there, Marvin Harrison Jr. or Michael Wilson (whichever your preference) will be there in the sixth or ninth round. You can then backfill with one of the secondary Raiders pass-catchers like Jalen Nailor or Tre Tucker, or maybe grab Fernando Mendoza in the 15th. I'm a little leery of Jacoby Brissett in this build because I'm not confident that he'll be starting Week 17.
Another idea to file away would be taking Tyler Allgeier if you have Jeanty, or Michael Mayer or Elijah Higgins (preferably in the 20th round on DraftKings but if you're this far down the road on Underdog, just commit to the bit in the 18th) to hedge against whichever elite tight end you missed.
Another nice factor about this game is that both teams play their entire playoff schedule indoors. The Cardinals get the Jets, Saints and Raiders while the Raiders get the Broncos and Titans before this showdown.
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