https://sports.yahoo.com/dfs-stacking-report-2025-nfl-152130521.html
Fantasy football doesn’t end with Week 18. For those (like me) whose self worth hinges on being able to predict player usage and game outcomes, there are daily fantasy contests.
Below is a look at how one might create so-called game stacks: Multiple players from one of Wild Card Weekend’s six games whose statistical upside would correlate nicely. In other words, if one team scores a bunch of points, the other team must at least try to respond with a bunch of points, usually with a pass-heavy game script.
If you suspect a quarterback and one or two of his pass catchers will have a big day, throwing in a correlated pass catcher from the opposing offense makes sense, and in many ways, makes thing easier. If the first thing happens (your QB-WR stack goes berserk), there’s a decent chance the second thing (a TE or WR on the other team sees a lot of targets) will happen.
The key in large-field DFS contests, as always, is to get away from the “chalk,” or players who will be widely rostered. That means gravitating toward less popular game situations, some of which I’ve highlighted below.
Commanders at Lions
Game total: 55.5
We know two things for (almost) certain about this matchup: The run-first Lions will try to eviscerate the run-funnel Commanders on the ground, and Jayden Daniels will be forced to drop back 40-plus times against the pass-funnel Detroit defense.
Washington ended the regular season as the NFL’s second most pronounced run funnel defense. A mere five opponents were over their expected pass rate against the Commanders in the regular season, and as the season progressed, teams turned more dramatically toward the ground game. That culminated last week with the pass-first Bucs going 8 percent below their expected pass rate against Washington. It was their run-heaviest outing of the year, and it came against a Washington defense giving up the second highest rate of rush yards before contact.
The Lions, meanwhile, have the NFL’s third highest rate of rush yards before contact. To say Jahmyr Gibbs is in a smash spot is underselling his Divisional Round setup. Even the return of David Montgomery, who told reporters this week that he’s “good to go” for this weekend, won’t stop Gibbs from 100-plus yards and a touchdown or three. In a four-game DFS slate, Gibbs is chalk I’m willing to eat. I’m excited to eat it, actually. I’ll sprinkle the Gibbs chalk on my chickpeas. This week’s short slate leaves open the possibility of playing Montgomery alongside Gibbs.
A hugely run-first game for Detroit naturally means targets should be limited for Lions pass catchers. Amon-Ra St. Brown, with at least eight targets in eight games this year, would be the only Lions pass catcher who might be immune to a dearth of pass attempts from Jared Goff. Jameson Williams and Sam LaPorta are far more likely to be negatively affected by a matchup with the run-funnel Commanders. The speed-demon Williams can still get there for DFS purposes with a single deep shot, however. Washington’s secondary has been pretty good against downfield passes; only six teams have allowed a lower completion rate over expected on targets of at least 20 yards downfield.
We saw Daniels a few times during the regular season drop back a bunch against clear pass funnel defenses. We’ll see the same unfold here, barring some weird turn of game script that might offer a path to a more balanced offensive approach for Washington. Assuming the Commanders and their struggling run game won’t stand a chance against Detroit — ranked 15th in rush yards before contact allowed — Daniels is in a good spot.
Mobile QBs tend to make hay (as the zoomers say) against defenses that play a lot of man coverage. Well, no defense has played more man coverage than the Lions in 2024. Anthony Richardson and Josh Allen both logged 11 rushes against the Detroit defense this year. It would come as no surprise for Daniels to reach double digit rushing attempts in the Divisional Round. Whether Daniels can thrive against Detroit’s coverage unit is another question entirely: The rookie was 3.5 percent below his expected completion rate against man coverages this season — 18th among 38 qualifying QBs — and no team plays more man coverage than the Lions.
If you’re playing Daniels — and a lot of your fellow DFSers will do just that — you almost have to stack him with two pass catchers, as no defense gave up more wideout yardage this season than the Lions. Only the Vikings allowed more catches to opposing receivers. Terry McLaurin would be the most natural stacking partner with Daniels; that goes without saying, though I decided to say it. Washington OC Kliff Kingsbury, for whatever it’s worth, said the team would make McLaurin a focal point in what should be a back-and-forth affair. “When he’s involved early we’re a lot better offense,” Kingsbury said of the Terry who is purportedly scary.
That the Lions have struggled against enemy slot receivers makes Olamide Zaccheaus and Zach Ertz interesting options too. Last week against the Bucs, Zaccheaus ran 60 percent of his routes from the slot and Ertz had a 54 percent slot rate.
Dyami Brown, meanwhile, plays mostly from the boundary and ran a route on just 56 percent of Daniels’ drop backs last week against Tampa on his way to the biggest outing of his NFL career (five catches for 89 yards and a touchdown). His Wild Card blowup performance will probably make Brown more popular than Zaccheaus in DFS contests. I’m not sure that’s the right takeaway considering Brown’s limited usage.
Austin Ekeler could be a beneficiary of a pass-heavy attack, though he split pass route running duties with Brian Robinson last week against the Bucs and saw four targets to Robinson’s five. Ekeler has nothing resembling a locked-in role as Washington’s passing down back.
A so-called skinny stack of Detroit-Washington might look like this: Gibbs (and Montgomery?) alongside McLaurin or Zaccheaus or Ertz.
Ravens at Bills
Game total: 51.5 points
Baltimore’s Week 4 annihilation of the Bills won’t be all that instructive for this Divisional Round matchup. All the trends and strategies we might have used to dissect this postseason matchup were thrown out with Derrick Henry’s long first quarter touchdown jaunt against Buffalo. There were nine plays of neutral game script in that game.
The Bills have invited the run for most of the season in their effort to limit downfield splash plays — a hallmark of the modern NFL defense. Buffalo have given up the eighth highest rate of rush yards before contact this year. Bills opponents have passed the ball at a 54 percent rate in neutral situations (when the game is within one score either way). This screams for another Big Henry game for a Ravens offense with the sixth lowest pass rate over expected. It’ll be frightening to fade Henry on this four-game slate.
With Zay Flowers (knee) out, Rashod Bateman and Tylan Wallace operated as the Ravens’ top two wideouts in the Wild Card round. Baltimore used two tight ends on 45 percent of their offensive snaps last week against the Steelers, a season high rate. That’ll likely persist this week against Buffalo, putting both Mark Andrews and Isaiah Likely in play as Lamar stacking partners. Likely ran a route on 19 of Baltimore’s 26 drop backs against the Steelers and saw a team-high four targets. That the Bills have given up the league’s fourth highest completion rate over expected on throws between 0-10 yards is probably a positive for Andrews and Likely.
Likely profiles as a cheap way to gain access to a game with a hefty 51.5-point total (against a defense that gives up a lot of underneath receptions).
Khalil Shakir commanded a target on a strong 26 percent of his pass routes in the Bills’ Wild Card massacre of the Broncos and continues to operate as the clear No. 1 wideout for Josh Allen. Sporting an air yards per target of just 5.5, Shakir is as close to a PPR scam as the Bills have this season. He’s the most sensible stacking option alongside Allen.
Beyond Shakir, the Bills’ target distribution is too spread out to rely on anyone else to see more than a handful of looks — barring sideways game script that creates a pass-heavy game for Allen and the Buffalo offense. Dalton Kincaid, for the record, led the Bills with seven targets when these teams met in Week 4. Overall it’s a rough spot for the Bills against a Baltimore coverage unit that has allowed a league low drop back EPA and passing success rate since Week 13.
Rams at Eagles
Game total: 43.5 points
This game, with a total that has dropped by two points since Monday, profiles as yet another in a long run of fantasy unfriendly Eagles games. Combine a clock-destroying run game with a top-end defense and you usually get low-volume efforts for Philadelphia opponents against an aggressive defense that does not have an obvious weakness.
Still, Puka Nacua seems like something of a must-play — if chalky — DFS option this weekend. Nacua over the past month has established himself as LA’s No. 1 receiver to a degree that might make the most ardent Cooper Kupp truther laugh. Or Cry. Or both. Nacua over the Rams’ past three games — excluding Week 18, when Sean McVay rested his starters — has seen a target on a stunning 38 percent of his pass routes. Kupp, meanwhile, has been targeted on 11 percent of his routes, an unfathomably low mark for a guy who used to command targets with the best of them.
Nacua is now the easy button option for Matthew Stafford, a role once occupied by Kupp. The hyper-efficient Puka has averaged 3.4 air yards per target over his past three outings. The Rams have decided to jam Nacua with targets and make him an extension of the run game. It’s a tremendous fantasy profile and one that will be hard (impossible) to overlook on this short slate.
This might be important: The Rams posted their second highest pass rate over expected (9.8 percent) of the year when these teams squared off in Week 12.
The Eagles were quite the opposite when these teams played back in November. Jalen Hurts and company were 13 percent below their expected pass rate against the Rams, generating a mere 22 pass attempts for 45 rushes. The Rams were a nothing funnel for much of the season but gravitated toward run funnel status over the regular season’s final month. It’s the sort of thing that could prove inviting for an Eagles offense with a 48 percent neutral pass rate and a 43 percent pass rate when leading.
Four teams — the Panthers, Commanders, Cowboys, and Bears — gave up a higher rate of rush yards before contact than the Rams during the regular season. LA gave up the league’s seventh highest rushing success rate from Week 12-18. They can and have been exploited on the ground. What I’m saying is Saquon Szn will continue until running back skeptics cry uncle (I am crying uncle).
Dallas Goedert, after stiff arming a Packers defender into the Upsidedown on a touchdown grab, will be a somewhat popular DFS play this weekend, and for good reason. Goedert faces an LA defense giving up the second most tight end receptions and the fourth most tight end yards. You may remember the Vikings’ only good offensive play last week against the Rams was a long catch-and-run TJ Hockenson touchdown.
Goedert, who saw a target on 33 percent of his routes against Green Bay, should be able to find the soft spots in the zone-heavy Rams secondary the way he did against the similarly zone-heavy Packers. Against a Tampa defense that plays zone at one of the NFL’s highest rates, Goedert in Week 4 went for 62 yards on seven catches. He was targeted on 28 percent of his routes when the Eagles beat the Rams in Week 14. It’s a theme.
If AJ Brown can put down his book long enough to get interested in the Eagles’ Divisional Round matchup, he could be an intriguing contrarian option on this week’s DFS slate as Amon-Ra St. Brown, Terry McLaurin, Nico Collins, and Puka Nacua soak up rostership. Last time Brown faced these Rams, with DeVonta Smith sidelined, he caught six of seven targets for 109 yards and a score.
The issue here might be the nature of the Rams secondary. Brown has had his biggest 2024 games against secondaries that deploy man coverage at high rates — the Commanders, Browns, and Steelers among them — while posting muted stat lines against zone-heavy defenses. Jalen Hurts has been far less aggressive against zone coverages this season. His average depth of target drops from 9.4 against man coverages to just 7 against zone. That’s enough to view Goedert as a better Hurts stacking option than Brown or Smith, whose production has also been ho-hum against zone looks this year.
Texans at Chiefs
Game total: 41.5 points
The last time these sputtering offenses faced each other — a 27-19 Chiefs victory in Week 16 — Xavier Worthy was deployed primarily as a short-area pass catcher for the first time this year. That, according to Chiefs coaches, was because Hollywood Brown returned to the KC lineup and finally allowed the team to use Worthy the way they had hoped to use him.
Worthy in Week 16 averaged just six air yards per target and caught seven of 11 targets for 65 yards and a Mahomes’ lone touchdown on the day. Headed into Week 16 against Houston, Worthy had averaged almost 11 air yards per target. That was chopped in half against the Texans. The following week in the Chiefs’ win over Pittsburgh, Worthy again averaged six air yards per target on his nine looks from Mahomes.
That seems to be his new role with Brown back in the lineup, and it makes Worthy a far more reliable fantasy option in the checkdown-heavy Chiefs offense. It’s why Worthy and, of course, Travis Kelce profile as the most obvious stacking options alongside Mahomes if you want to fade this weekend’s most popular QB plays and assume a big day for Midhomes, who had the fifth highest drop back EPA of Week 17 — the last time KC’s starters played.
You might not be stunned to learn that Noah Gray’s short-lived fantasy outburst — he caught 16 passes, including four scores, between Week 11-14 — coincided with the Chiefs ramping up their two tight end sets. They used two tight ends on about half their plays over that stretch, increasing route volume for Gray. With Brown’s insertion into the Kansas City offense, the Chiefs have since turned to two tight end sets on 30 percent of their offensive snaps. Gray has been targeted on a meager 8 percent of his pass routes over the team’s final couple regular season games. He’s a touchdown-or-bust bet for DFS this weekend.
Brown, meanwhile, ran a route on just 40 percent of the team’s drop backs in Week 16 and Week 17. Here’s the intriguing part: Brown was targeted on an absurd 44 percent of his routes over those two games, averaging 8.2 air yards per target. His usage and involvement appears to be very intentional. I see Brown as just as good a DFS option as DeAndre Hopkins, who will likely draw far more rostership this weekend.
There’s simply no way the Texans are going to establish it against the Chiefs. No one does. Only seven teams have given up a lower rate of rush yards before contact than the Chiefs, and a mere six teams have allowed a lower rush EPA on the season. Houston’s run game, as you may have noticed, has stalled bigly over the season’s second half. The down-bad Chargers ended the regular season as the only team with a higher rushing stuff rate than Joe Mixon and the Texans. Mixon managed 57 yards on 14 carries against KC in Week 16. There are other (better) ways to get cute on this week’s DFS slate.
That leaves C.J. Stroud and the Houston pass catchers in what will probably be a pass-heavy script, if offensive coordinator Bobby Slowik allows it.
Stroud posted his fourth highest yardage total (282) when these teams played back in December. It wasn’t necessarily an excellent outing though. Only three quarterbacks in Week 17 had a lower success rate than Stroud, who ranked 17th out of 30 qualifying quarterbacks in drop back EPA that week. The hope here is that drop back volume — Houston was 10 percent over its expected pass rate against the Chiefs in Week 16 — and some rushing juice makes Stroud a reasonable contrarian play as DFS knowers flock to Hurts and Jackson and Daniels and Allen. Stroud had 42 yards on six rushes last week against the Chargers. Sometimes postseason urgency is the easiest path to QB rushing production.
Nico Collins led the Texans with 11 (mostly short) targets against KC in Week 16. His air yards per target (8.3) was well below his season-long air yards per target (11). Though it didn’t amount to much — 60 scoreless yards on seven receptions — it’s clear Stroud will jam the ball to his best receiver when it matters most. Collins fits best as a standalone run-back option alongside a Chiefs stack, I think.
John Metchie looks like Houston’s clear No. 2 receiver after yours truly touted Diontae Johnson as the Texans WR2 last week only to see him play 15 percent of the team’s snaps and get one target against the Chargers, then promptly get thrown off the team for pouting in the locker room after Houston’s postseason victory. So it goes. Metchie was targeted eight times last week against LA and ran a route on 25 of Stroud’s 40 drop backs.
Dalton Schultz was second on the team in routes in the Wild Card round if that matters to you. The most inconsequential tight end in the NFL will continue running wind sprints during games until morale improves.
https://sports.yahoo.com/dfs-stacking-report-2025-nfl-152130521.html
