Fantasy Football Skill Position Stacking in 2023

Last year, I examined the idea of the “Skill Position Stack” in fantasy football. While the typical “stack” consists of pairing a quarterback with one of his top receivers on your fantasy team, the skill position stack involves drafting both a team’s top running back and receiver. In this article, I will be using a set of guidelines to assess if there are any viable skill position stacks in 2023.

Note: I defined a skill position stack as an RB and WR on the same team that both had an ADP in the first three rounds of fantasy drafts, as the early rounds are when the strategy of stacking is a real question (because you would be tying your team’s best players to one offense).

Recap: The Dos and Don’ts of Skill Position Stacks

Here is a summary of the “rules” that I devised last year to determine potentially successful skill position stacks. It’s important to keep in mind that not all players that follow these rules will be successful, but they are helpful to narrow down the list and eliminate the options you should not consider at all.

• Do: Take a player on a good offense. This is the most important one. Employing a skill position stack is volatile because you have lots of eggs in one team’s basket, so it’s crucial that the players are in a productive, high-scoring offense. The main reason to try out an RB/WR stack is to increase the ceiling of your team—having both CeeDee Lamb and Tony Pollard in a week where the Cowboys' offense was incredible would be nearly unbeatable—so it makes sense to try and find the team that will have the maximum number of spike weeks.

• Don’t: Draft a player in a committee or 1A/1B situation. Both the rusher and receiver in the stack must have a clear, undisputed path to volume. Skill position stacks are inherently somewhat inefficient because players on the same team might “steal” points from the other—only one person can score a touchdown per drive—so having as much volume as possible for both players would help minimize the overlap in their production on the same team.

• Do: Take a player with a proven red-zone track record. Touchdowns are a flimsy stat year-to-year, but taking notoriously productive touchdown scorers will also help lower the risks of an RB/WR stack. A skill position stack is a ceiling-raising strategy, so you might as well try and make that ceiling as high as possible instead of taking a safer-but-less- explosive player. This isn’t as important as some of the other rules, but is certainly nice to have.

• Don’t: Draft unproven players. Us fantasy managers can sometimes get swept up in hype trains and take players that simply aren’t that good at football. This is something to avoid all the time in fantasy football, but especially so in skill position stacks where ineffective players will severely hinder the upside of the strategy.

Skill Position Stacks in 2022

Using the guidelines listed above, let’s first examine how the skill position stacks of last season fared. I’ll consider a “successful" stack to be one where both players finished in the top 15 at their position in fantasy points per game (minimum 10 games played)—in other words, whether or not they were able to offer roughly RB1 and WR1 level production for your team.

One quick note: Tony Pollard and CeeDee Lamb also fit the bill of a successful RB/WR stack last year but didn't make this list because Pollard was drafted well outside the first three rounds of drafts.

It’s nice to see that the rules we outlined generally applied in 2022. All three offenses were above-average in the passing game, two were solid in the run game, and all three ranked top-10 in total yards per game last year. The six players involved also were the clear top options at their positions in their respective offenses and had good quarterbacks throwing them the ball.

*Panthers duo Christian McCaffrey and D.J. Moore were omitted from the table as CMC was traded to the 49ers midseason.

The unsuccessful stacks seem to follow the opposite of our rules, which is a positive sign. After all, it makes sense that a team like the Colts or Cardinals were unable to support both a top-12 RB and WR considering they ranked bottom-10 in the league in EPA per play and in points scored, meaning they had very few opportunities to create fantasy points.

Does Best Ball Make a Difference?

One of the pitfalls of stacking in fantasy football is that it lowers the week-to-week consistency of your fantasy lineup—if a team has a bad week, two of your best players might be disappointing. However, in best ball formats, this is much less of a problem, as there is no in-season lineup management. This makes all forms of stacks more enticing, and RB/WR combos are no exception.

Here, we can see that the teams in Best Ball Mania II that employed a successful RB/WR stack enjoyed a much higher playoff advance rate when compared to the average, and also generally scored more points in the regular season. This tells us that skill position stacking is even more valuable in best ball, as you essentially can reap all of its benefits while mitigating most of the risk.

Skill Position Stacks in 2023

Here’s a look at the potential skill position stacks you can draft this year:

Tony Pollard (RB9) & CeeDee Lamb (WR7)

As long as Pollard fully recovers from the injury he suffered in the playoffs last season, this stack has serious potential. With Ezekiel Elliott no longer on the Cowboys, Pollard (finally) should see the bulk of the volume out of the backfield. While Dallas did trade for veteran Brandin Cooks to add to their receiver room, Lamb still should be the #1 option after commanding a 28% target share last season. The Cowboys have finished top-10 in offensive EPA per play in three out of the last four years (they didn’t in 2020, when Dak Prescott missed the last 12 weeks of the season), and seem to match our rules rather well. Both Pollard and Lamb are going near the turn of the second and third rounds, so you could potentially grab either an elite running back or receiver in the early first round and supplement them with this Cowboys duo.

Breece Hall (RB10) & Garrett Wilson (WR10)

This sophomore Jets duo likely has the largest range of outcomes of the potential skill position stacks. Hall was electric in his rookie season before tearing his ACL in Week 7 but should be healthy for this season. Wilson also had an incredible start to his career and won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2022. The success of this pairing will rest on the shoulders of Aaron Rodgers. The four-time MVP did not play up to his usual standards last season and showed some signs of decline. If it was just a down year for Rodgers, then Hall and Wilson have the talent and opportunity to be great in a revitalized Jets offense. With this being said, there are too many question marks involved for me to trust the Jets to support two of my top three players.

Joe Mixon (RB13) & Ja'Marr Chase (WR2) / Tee Higgins (WR15)

Mixon has crept up into the third round of drafts in the midst of a confusing off-season where he was listed as a cut candidate and was facing potential legal trouble for aggravated menacing charges. However, Mixon recently agreed to restructure his contract to keep him for the next two seasons, so it looks like he will continue to be the Bengals' RB1. At the writing of this article, Mixon is the RB14 in ADP, which would make him quite a value—Mixon was the RB7 in fantasy points per game last year and is the clear #1 running back in the Bengals offense (especially since Samaje Perine signed with the Broncos). As part of one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL, Mixon and Chase would form a deadly combination for your fantasy team considering Mixon’s current price tag. I’d be willing to stack the two of them even if Mixon’s ADP rises into the second round because of how exciting the Bengals' offense could be.

If you don’t want to invest that much early capital in the offense, you could grab Tee Higgins as your WR2 in the fourth round instead of Chase. Higgins was the WR16 in fantasy last year and will see more than enough volume to coexist alongside Chase.

Nick Chubb (RB4) & Amari Cooper (WR14)

Chubb and Cooper are similar to Hall and Wilson in that their quarterback play will determine the success of the stack. Chubb can be penciled in for a great season—he has been an RB1 for four straight years, but Cooper’s productivity depends on Deshaun Watson’s play. Watson looked extremely rusty in his return from suspension last season, and Cooper, who finished as the WR9, was much better when Jacoby Brissett was under center—he averaged 13.4 fantasy points per game with Brissett, and 9.9 with Watson. If Watson improves, this stack could be very useful. Chubb and Cooper are not the most exciting players to own, but they could potentially be your RB2 and WR2 respectively. If you believe that Watson returns to his pre-suspension form, there is value to be had in pairing these two players.

Davante Adams (WR4) & Josh Jacobs (RB8)

This stack is a little bit tricky to attain due to where Adams and Jacobs are being drafted. Adams is going in the late first round, while Jacobs is going in the middle of the second. So, in order to take them both, you would likely have to either reach on Adams at around the 1.05, or Jacobs at the first/second round turn. I don’t like the idea of sacrificing value just to employ a stack in typical formats, so I would stay away from this combo in normal redraft leagues. In best ball, however, this stack has a lot more merit because Adams and Jacobs are both phenomenal football players that will be near the top of the league in volume. Jimmy Garoppolo might not be elite, but he has been able to support elite fantasy players his entire career, so Adams and Jacobs are a viable duo in best ball.

The Bottom Line

• Early-round RB/WR stacking is a ceiling-raising fantasy football strategy that could add a dynamic and explosive twist to your fantasy team if employed correctly.
• It is important to consider the quality of offense and opportunity when deciding whether or not to stack two skill position players.
• Skill position stacks are especially valuable in best ball, where the week-to-week volatility is severely reduced.
• There are a few RB/WR stacks that fit the bill of being successful this year and could propel your fantasy team to glory.