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Stack 'Em Up - Week 1

37-jay-cutlerDaily fantasy football has many different gaming options and hosts to play on. While Draft Kings and FanDuel have lapped the field in popularity, we’re all still pretty scattered when it comes to choosing style—tournaments, head-to-head, 50/50’s, and leagues get healthy shares of players on a weekly basis.

In this weekly column I am going to give you DFS advice that is tailored specifically to the tournament style. The idea behind stacking is simple—you pair your quarterback with any combination of one to three wide receivers and tight ends from the same team. For example, if I were using the stacking strategy, I would pair Derek Carr with James Jones and potentially Denarious Moore as well. However, I wouldn’t actually do that, at least not in Week 1 against Rex Ryan’s defensive scheme in Carr’s first NFL start.

In 50/50 and head-to-head matchups you have likely read that finding consistency and value is the way to win. This makes sense because you only need to beat out one player or half of a playing field. In tournament style, you should be looking at creating your roster differently. The goal of stacking is to create a high ceiling for your squad in the tournament. You’re not winning anything by finishing better than half or even two thirds of your opponents—this is why you want to maximize upside at all costs.

If you hit the right combination in a high scoring game, stacking can really pay off. As a general rule for this column, I am going to try to avoid picking the obvious stack play for the week. For example, this week many people are targeting the Cowboys defense—as they should be—and they are stacking Colin Kaepernick with Michael Crabtree, Anquan Boldin, Vernon Davis or some combination of the three. Advising you to stack with these players would be counterintuitive. The point of stacking in a tournament is to differentiate yourself while increasing your ceiling—picking the same players are the majority of DFS players does not accomplish this.

Don’t forget to check out our customizable Daily Fantasy Tool, available to Gold subscribers through a link on the weekly projections page. It quickly combines PFF Fantasy’s weekly projections with DraftKings and FanDuel pricing to give a head start when setting your lineups.

Without further ado, let’s take a look at my three stack plays for opening week.

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