This article is part of our DFS Football 101 series.
For those who have played MLB DFS in particular, the term "stacking" is likely a familiar one. In daily fantasy baseball, the term refers to loading up on multiple players from the same team, and it's a strategy often prompted by a matchup against a poor starting pitcher and/or bullpen. With each player guaranteed 3-4 trips to the plate barring any pinch-hitting scenarios, the production or opportunity of one player doesn't adversely affect the others. In fact, they can often work in concert.
To an extent, stacking can be beneficial in NBA DFS as well, though to a lesser degree. Only one player can put the ball in the basket on any given possession, but his teammates can accrue fantasy points in other ways (i.e. assists, rebounds, blocks, steals, etc.) making all of them useable for fantasy purposes.
One Ball to Go Around
More like the NBA than MLB in how two teammates can help each other's causes fantasy-wise, the NFL has a certain amount of room for prudent stacking. However, just as with basketball, there's only one ball to go around, and technically, no one offensive skill player except the quarterback is guaranteed to touch it once the game begins. Opportunity for fantasy scoring is somewhat at a premium as a result, so making sure you're not working at cross purposes when building your NFL DFS lineup by inadvertently stacking an inefficient combination of teammates is crucial.
One of the positives of NFL DFS is that with a relatively small pool of players on each team who realistically have a chance to get touches each week, the stacking combinations are fairly clear cut. For example, even new NFL DFS players are likely familiar with the benefits of rostering a quarterback and receiver from the same team, which can pay off handsomely in the right type of offensive environment, particularly on touchdown passes. In fact, many may have deployed such a strategy in their season-long leagues with success.
The relationship between quarterback and running back teammates, however, is much murkier to navigate from an NFL daily fantasy perspective. After all, in the overwhelming majority of cases, it stands to reason that if one is thriving in a game, it's largely coming at the expense of the other's numbers. It all traces back to the Only One Ball to Go Around Principle, and a lack of awareness of this important tenet of NFL DFS can sabotage many a lineup.
The QB/RB Stacking Conundrum
This phenomenon holds especially true most often when rostering a quarterback and his starting running back in the same game. By definition, the more the quarterback is raking in points through the air, the less opportunity the running back has to build up his own scoring haul. Likewise, the more a back gets rolling, the more prone a head coach and offensive coordinator are likely to keep feeding him, particularly as the opposing front seven progressively wears down.
Naturally, as with almost any DFS principle, there are exceptions to this rule, with the most prominent being the handful of scenarios where high-volume pass-catching backs reside along prolific signal-callers. Two such cases in today's NFL are the Chargers' Danny Woodhead and the Steelers' Le'Veon Bell, who happen to play in pass-heavy attacks.
In Woodhead's case, his running opportunities are actually limited, so he essentially plays the role of an extra possession receiver for Philip Rivers. Therefore, rostering Rivers and Woodhead together often paid off for NFL daily fantasy players in 2015, as the diminutive back received a whopping 106 targets. Bell represents an even rarer situation, a back who manages to check the boxes of both robust rushing attempts and ample pass-catching opportunities in the Steelers' high-octane offense. Just as with Woodhead, locking both Ben Roethlisberger and Bell into a daily fantasy football lineup has paid off handsomely for players over the last couple of seasons.
Additional Factors to Consider
As we've highlighted in previous installments, there are other factors -- such as point spreads, projected point totals and defensive matchups -- that should always be considered when building a daily fantasy football lineup, and can help serve as tie-breakers when trying to decide whether a QB/RB pairing might be safe to implement.
For example, a game with an elevated point total and relatively tight point spread can serve as a potentially safe opportunity to roster a QB/RB combo from the same team, as the projected flow of the game implies that there will be plenty of points to go around and that the running game will remain viable throughout.
On the other hand, a contest with a large point spread in either direction is likely a "one or the other" scenario when it comes to deciding between a running back and quarterback on the same team. A heavy favorite's running back could well be the prudent play, as the team will likely abandon the passing game early if the game mostly unfolds as predicted by Vegas. The opposite is possibly true with sizable underdogs, as the running game is usually put on ice early when a large deficit needs to be made up.
