Top DFS Stacks on FanDuel and DraftKings: Week 7

Stacking players is a stairway to the top of daily fantasy tournaments, maximizing upside by creating the sort of volatility that can help your roster post a crooked score—one way or another.

Below are some of the most intriguing stacking plays I found while sifting through the week's matchups. Most of these options will leave room for high-ceiling studs. The goal, naturally, is to get a lot for a little. So let's get into it.

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Green Bay Packers (-3.5) @ Houston Texans, O/U 57.5 points

QB Deshaun Watson, Texans ($8,000 FD/$6,800 DK)

WR Will Fuller, Texans ($6,900 FD/$6,800 DK)

RB Aaron Jones, Packers ($8,500 FD/$7,200 DK)

TE Robert Tonyan, Packers ($6,000 FD/$4,600 DK)

UPDATE: Aaron Jones is questionable to play Sunday with a calf injury. If he's inactive, Jamaal Williams will certainly be widely rostered in cash games. For tournament purposes, plugging in AJ Dillon could be the savvy move. A solid day for both Dillon and Williams is in the range of outcomes if Jones misses Week 7.

This Houston-Green Bay mega-stack is positioned to take advantage of DFS players’ recency bias—that stubborn thing that’s so hard to overcome in building lineups. Our brains, designed to recall the most recent events and their outcomes, remember being burned by every Packers player in Week 6 against the Bucs. It was a hideous affair in which no one survived. A million GPP lineups went poof as the Packers floundered against real competition.

Things are different this week as Green Bay takes on an eminently burnable Houston defense. The Texans’ struggles against the run didn’t start with Derrick Henry eviscerating them in Week 6, and it won’t end with Henry. Houston, being gouged for a league-high 35.7 schedule-adjusted points by opposing backs, has given up 969 rushing yards through six weeks. Even the Cowboys’ abomination of a defense has allowed fewer yards on the ground. Teams have established and established hard against Houston: 41.96% of the yards gained against the Texans in 2020 have come via the rush—the second-highest rate in the league. That makes Aaron Jones, coming off a down week with every other Packer, a prime bounce-back candidate.

With a price tag that dropped $400 on DraftKings and remained stagnant on FanDuel, Jones has a tremendous ceiling this week if he sees anything close to his normal workload. He has a team-high 34% total opportunity (carries plus targets). Forget last week. Jones has 20, 22, 18, and 20 touches in Green Bay wins this year. With game script on his side, it probably won’t take a ton of touches to post a fat stat line. Alvin Kamara is the only running back this week with a higher projected ceiling, according to 4for4’s floor and ceiling projection machine.

Robert Tonyan looks like a cheap way to benefit from Green Bay’s massive 30.5-point implied total against Houston (a total that’s increased by a point since the start of the week). This is where I tell you Tonyan missed some of the game against Tampa with an ankle injury—one that kept him out of Wednesday’s practice.

Houston opponents have consistently attacked via the tight end, with nearly 24% of targets against the Texans this season going to tight ends—the seventh-highest rate in the NFL. Five teams allow more tight end catches and five teams give up more tight end yardage through Week 6.

Tonyan’s role in the Green Bay offense remained intact last week against the Bucs. He was one of two Packers tight ends who ran pass routes—he ran 23 while Marcedes Lewis ran 10. Tonyan saw four targets against Tampa, catching three. And there’s this: Tonyan’s pass routes have not been empty routes. He’s been targeted on 21.12% of his routes over his past three games. That’s a solid number on par with the game’s top tight ends.

Titans tight ends commanded 14 targets against these Texans just last week. Anthony Firkser turned nine targets into eight catches for 113 yards and a touchdown. In Week 5, Jacksonville tight ends saw a combined 10 targets against Houston. Pittsburgh tight ends, led by Eric Ebron, drew 10 targets against the Texans in Week 3. Houston linebacker Zach Cummingham has been miserable in coverage this season, with 19 targets against him resulting in 17 receptions for 219 yards.

Toss Watson and Fuller into the equation with potentially negative game script and you have an undeniably high ceiling in the game with the week’s highest over/under (Brandin Cooks, significantly cheaper on both sites, could work too, though he lacks Fuller’s air yards profile). Fuller leads the team in air yards by a good margin—only seven receivers in the league have more air yards—and has caught four of eight deep balls this season for 147 yards and two scores. It’s a near certainty Fuller will get a few long balls against Green Bay if the Texans are able to hang with the Packers or if they face a big deficit through most of the contest. Naturally, he has the highest projected ceiling of any Houston wideout this week.

Detroit Lions (+3) @ Atlanta Falcons, O/U 56.5 points

QB Matthew Stafford, Lions ($7,300 FD/$8,500 DK)

WR Kenny Golladay, Lions ($7,600 FD/$6,700 DK)

WR Calvin Ridley, Falcons ($8,400 FD/$7,300 DK)

It should be worth eating Golladay’s salary jump if it means playing him alongside at least one of Atlanta’s two all-world wideouts. I went with Ridley here because he’s slated to see a lot of coverage from Jeffrey Okudah, who has been tormented by opposing receivers all season. Playing Ridley and Julio Jones along with Stafford and Golladay is certainly in play, if you can stomach paying down at every other spot in your roster.

DFS players are going to happily use D’Andre Swift and Adrian Peterson in this matchup after we saw them—particularly Swift—dominate against the Jaguars last week. There’s one problem with that: Jacksonville is miserable against the run while the Falcons aren’t half bad. In fact, they’re pretty good. Atlanta has allowed the sixth-fewest rushing yards this year; only seven teams have seen fewer rush attempts against them. Offenses are piling up yardage and points against the Falcons defense (you haven’t been hallucinating) but it’s been almost exclusively through the air. A mere 22.47% of the yards gained against the Falcons in 2020 has been via the run. Only Seattle has a lower rate.

The Falcons have been plainly and simply bad against the pass, allowing the ninth most schedule-adjusted fantasy points to wideouts and the most adjusted points to signal-callers. An incredible five of six quarterbacks to face the Falcons this season have gone for more than 300 yards. In the one game in which a QB did not crack 300 yards against Atlanta—Week 3 against the Bears—Mitch Trubisky and Nick Foles combined for 316 yards. So there’s that. DFS players, burned by a chalky Stafford in Week 6, might be off him in a superb matchup.

Probably the same can’t be said for Golladay—I suspect he’ll have moderately high tournament usage in Week 7. I think he’s worth chasing though. Golladay is a ball hog—he’s played just three games this season but dominates Detroit’s targets with a 23% target share. He leads the team in air yards too. Again, he’s played three of the Lions’ five games. Perhaps his one-week $500 price increase on DraftKings will keep just enough people off Golladay for him to be a useful tournament play. Golladay gets a downright dreamy matchup against Kendall Sheffield, the Atlanta corner who has allowed 20 receptions for 299 yards and a touchdown on 28 targets this season. Fire up Babytron.

Cincinnati Bengals (+3.5) @ Cleveland Browns, O/U 50

RB Kareem Hunt, Browns ($7,100 FD/$6,800 DK)

WR Tyler Boyd, Bengals ($6,000 FD/$5,400 DK)

This is what the zoomers call a secondary stack, or a correlated combo you can place alongside a more traditional, complete stack that includes a QB and at least one of his pass-catchers. The thought here is that a big day for Hunt means a (possibly) big day for Boyd.

Both of these guys, not coincidentally, had good outings when these teams played in Week 2. Hunt, with Nick Chubb healthy and churning out yardage, saw 17 touches and gained 81 yards against the Bengals, narrowly missing a touchdown. Bengals opponents have continued to establish, with 36.06% of yardage against the Bengals coming on the ground. Only four teams have allowed a higher rate. We know head coach Kevin Stefanski first and foremost fashions himself a run establisher. Hunt will be fed if the Browns can maintain neutral or positive script in Week 7. I like their chances.

Boyd caught seven of eight targets for 72 yards and a touchdown against the Browns that night. Joe Burrow likely won’t throw the ball 61 times in Week 7, as he did in Week 2, but the game’s over/under and Cleveland’s deficiencies against the pass this season makes this game a sneaky one to stack. That puts Boyd—whose DraftKings price fell $400 since last week—in play as a ceiling option for tournament purposes. While the Browns’ struggles against slot receivers have been at least partly addressed with the return of starters in the secondary, slot wideouts can still expect a solid matchup against Cleveland.