The Re-Draft Roundtables Series
The Footballguys staff looks at various strategies to help you in redraft leagues.
Participating in a redraft league is a process that starts with the draft and hopefully ends with a championship. The Footballguys staff has answered several questions about various strategies to help you achieve your championship dreams. From the beginning to the end and everything in between, we've got you covered to give you the tools and knowledge needed to dominate your redraft league.
Do you often stack players (draft multiple players from the same team) in redraft leagues? Explain why this strategy can give you an edge. Are there certain stacks that you often find yourself targeting?
CRAIG LAKINS
Stacking can be a feast or famine, but I jump on it whenever I get the chance. When it hits, your odds of winning increase dramatically. In fantasy football, you need x-number of plays to go in your favor to put points up. If your starting quarterback and wide receiver are tied together and connect for a big play, you need fewer plays to go in your favor for a winning outcome. The risk is that your fantasy team could be in rough shape when your stack has a bad game. But if chosen wisely, they can carry you beyond what your team might have been capable of. In 2020, Josh Allen and Stefon Diggs won me a championship by getting hot at the right time while my team was no better than the middle of the pack.
CHAD PARSONS
I am open to stacking players from the same offense. However, I am typically a late-quarterback proponent (in 1QB formats), so I have plenty of pass-catchers before knowing my quarterback. In general, my formula would be a dominant leading receiver for a good-enough quarterback, or the clear WR1 or tight end paired with one of the best quarterbacks in the league. For 2022, Tom Brady and Mike Evans, Deshaun Watson and Amari Cooper, and Matthew Stafford and Allen Robinson are three of my favorites.
BEN CUMMINS
I do when it makes sense, but I don’t force it. A quarterback connecting with his pass-catcher for a touchdown provides your lineup with essentially double the points if both players are stacked in your lineup. Football is tough to predict every week, so stacking also provides a major edge because it reduces the number of things we have to get right in our lineups.
JASON WOOD
Stacking makes a ton of sense in best-ball and larger tournament-style leagues where you're trying to build a differentiated lineup that beats hundreds of others. But in standard 10-12-14-team formats, I give no thought to stacking one way or another. I just draft the best players available to me at positions of need.
JORDAN MCNAMARA
I like stacking when I think I have an edge. Stacking is the easiest way to leverage a correct bet, and being right once is easier than being right twice. That said, I would not stack just to do it. I stacked Philadelphia's offense in 2020, and it only leveraged my team's misfortune.
ANDY HICKS
As mentioned, this can work well in best-ball leagues on explosive offenses that score more fantasy points. Often third and fourth-string receivers are useless week to week, but in best ball, they can get you winning lineups. In other leagues, no. The best player that is available. If I end up with a stack, bye-week management becomes more important.
CHRISTIAN WILLIAMS
While stacking is a strategy that pays off more often than not, the allure of the method can be problematic. Reaching for the stack can often mean sacrificing value, and stacking isn't worth that sacrifice. If a stack falls in my lap, I scoop it up. My favorite this year is the Justin Fields-Darnell Mooney combination, as both players are values that I'm comfortable taking a little higher than consensus. Other options are high-volume, productive offenses. The Cowboys, Chargers, and Buccaneers come to mind this year.
WILL GRANT
I'm not a big fan of doing this in redraft leagues for a few reasons:
- It's pretty hard to do because of the gap between picks. When you draft the first player, someone in the league will have inevitably wanted that player but settle for the other half of the stack with their next pick.
- It inherently limits your upside scoring. If one player catches the ball and scores, the other player doesn't. Unless the NFL offense is scoring three or four offensive touchdowns each week, it's hard for both players to have really good games
- In DFS, you can stack players against a weak opponent to your advantage. In redraft, those players face different defenses every week. On weeks where they play a top-ranked defense, when the weather is raining and cold, or when the center is injured in the pre-game warmup, you are now faced with multiple players who will underperform that week.
That said, drafting a quarterback and wide receiver from the same high-scoring offense can work well. Last season Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams hooked up 11 times. When Rodgers had a good game, Adams almost always did as well. Having a quarterback and wide receiver from the same team eliminates the issue of one guy doing well at the expense of the other.
If I land a top-tier quarterback for my fantasy team, I will frequently skip drafting a backup quarterback during the draft. I can't see benching Patrick Mahomes II for any other quarterback, regardless of matchups, so drafting a second quarterback isn't needed for Week 1. However, I will consider adding Chad Henne to my roster after Mahomes has a bye week to protect against a late-season injury. If Mahomes ever goes down, I'd rather not risk losing Henne to someone with a better free agency claim than I have.
GARY DAVENPORT
The good thing about stacks is that if it pops, jackpot. The bad thing about stacks is that if it doesn't, a sizable chunk of your lineup just went splat. Don't target them any more than I avoid them. If I have Mike Evans and Tom Brady is there in a position of value, great. But I'm not reaching just to double-dip. With that in mind, Russell Wilson and Courtland Sutton feels like a stack with a good price ratio to the potential payout.