BestBall10s: 10 Intriguing Stacks for 2021

The term stack boasts several connotations, most of which are pretty positive. We love to have stacks of money, pancakes, books, Peloton classes and even red solo cups. A chimney stack is usually alright, too. When it comes to fantasy football, stacking is a strategy that was born in DFS and made its way to best ball formats. To highlight the upside of drafting multiple players from the same team or teams, we can look at correlations found in DFS studies, like the ones located in our Definitive Guide to Stacking article in the DFS Strategy Hub.

This piece will focus on some solid stacking options for the 2021 season in Bestball10s leagues so that you can magnify your output each week, while still maximizing value. The goal in best-ball isn’t exactly the same as your classic leagues in wanting to score the most points. Sure, you want to score all the points, but huge weeks are the differentiator since injuries and luck tend to even out teams from week to week. So if you approach best-ball similar to DFS, then stacking is beneficial to your season as a whole.

I’ll go over some of the basic stacks, but you can mix and match the various suggestions beyond the simple two-position combinations, as the value and reasons for recommending each offense and the individual player still apply.

First a Look Back at 2020

Pulling data from last year’s BB10s leagues, we find that QB/WR (57.2%) had the strongest success rate followed by QB/RB (41.2%), with QB/TE coming in third with 24.3% of winning teams boasting that type of stack.

If we get down to the player level, we can see the most successful combinations in each variant and how their win rates decrease based on the type of stack used in 2020 in BB10 leagues.

The data indicates that almost all of the successful stacks featured QBs coming from the middle of drafts (Rounds 7-14), with only a few outliers. Stacking usually conjures up high-end player thoughts, but the findings actually point to something different. With a mid-round approach in 2020, fantasy managers weren’t forced into sacrificing assets to gain an edge.

When looking for fantasy production out of quarterbacks, pass rate is a great indicator, specifically neutral pass rate, because the higher that number, the greater likelihood of that team to continue to pass in the red zone. The Bucs and Bills were tied for the third-highest neutral pass rate (62%) last year so it’s no surprise to see both Tom Brady and Josh Allen all over the winningest stacks, along with their respective pass catchers.

Green Bay featured the eighth-highest neutral pass rate in 2020 and we find Aaron Rodgers, Davante Adams and Aaron Jones repeatedly among the winningest stacks from last season. It also helped their case that the Packers had a narrow target tree so the value for Adams as a first-rounder and Jones in the second was well worth the risk.

Patrick Mahomes was the only early-round QB who showed up in the winningest stacks, and all of them involved Travis Kelce. Kelce’s output in relation to opportunity cost propelled him to the top in 2020, as he saw the same or more targets (9.0 per game) than those WRs drafted around him like his teammate Tyreek Hill (9.0) and Julio Jones (7.6). His 19.5 PPR points per contest also bested the RBs at similar ADP such as Josh Jacobs (15.4), Joe Mixon (16.6) and Miles Sanders (14.8).

Continue reading for 10 QB/WR, QB/RB and QB/TE stacks.

Potential QB/WR Stacks for 2021

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