Adam Zibuda Week 3 was mostly a bust for yours truly as I tried to get a bit too cute with some Jaguars stacks. Luckily I now am very well aware of how much Trevor Lawrence and the Jags suck, so I will not be making that mistake again. As usual I will be covering the top quarterbacks and players to stack with them for GPP contests across the NFL DFS industry, so any stack that I recommend is in play for both FanDuel and DraftKings. With that said, let’s get to the picks!
The QB’s
A. Similar to most of the DFS industry, I have yet to roster Patrick Mahomes ($8,100 DK / $8,700 FD) and his weapons in this young NFL season. Obviously the reasoning has nothing to do with the talent, upside, or stack options and all to do with the consistently exorbitant price tags of this Chiefs stack. Unfortunately, I am not here to tell you that this team is suddenly extremely affordable this week, so we will definitely need to find some cheap ancillary pieces to get exposure to. However, I expect the Chiefs to smash to a similar degree that they did in week 1. This game is tied for the highest total of the week with the Cardinals and Rams matchup, and I do not expect the Chiefs to be very popular yet again. This team has let down bettors and DFS players the last two weeks, and their prices have not exactly dropped very much. Without any chalky value plays jumping out at this point in the week, DFS players will again have a very difficult time affording this team unless they hate the rest of their lineup. I think that we can find a way to make this stack work this week and the Chiefs should live up to their expectations as the team with the highest implied total.
B. If Patrick Mahomes does end up catching a significant amount of ownership, then I can assure your that my second quarterback will not. Matt Ryan ($5,400 DK / $6,700 FD) is definitely approaching the end of his career, there is no arguing that, but I feel strongly that he still has a few ceiling games left in him this season. This is a great spot for one as he faces a Washington Football Team that is ranked 30th in total defense DVOA and 26th in DVOA against the pass. This team has surrendered production to the quarterback position at the 27th highest rate, and while this game does not jump off the page in terms of an over/under, the ownership will be nearly non-existent. Washington struggles heavily against the run as well, but with the two stars of this offense slotting in as pass-catchers, I expect the damage to come through the air in this one.
C. I am not sure that I have written up a single quarterback twice through four weeks of this young NFL season, and that will not come to an end here. Russell Wilson ($7,100 DK / $7,700 FD) and the Seattle Seahawks will head to San Francisco to face off against the 49ers for the afternoon portion of the main slate this Sunday. This is a sneaky game to target because the total is not in the top four for the week, but it does slot in at number five and is only a few points behind the two games tied for the highest total which are likely to be much chalkier. The 49ers defense has not seen very much success through the first three weeks, ranking 24th in total DVOA, 27th against the pass, and 18th against the run. The clear way to attack this defense so far this season has been through the air, and that is what I expect Pete Carroll to do in this spot. We should see Russ get cooking as a slight road underdog in a soft matchup for quarterbacks with a very solid over/under.
The Stacks
A. The Chiefs side of this stack is very obvious if you watch any football at all, so I will touch on it briefly but focus more on the other side of the ball as we search for potential game-stack correlations. Some like to get cute with the Chiefs and target the ancillary pass catchers of Hardman, Robinson, or even Pringle, but if we are getting tournament-winning upside out of this team it will not be from these guys. The obvious options are Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, and I will keep all of my Chiefs stacks to either one of both of these two guys. On the other side of the ball, DeVonta Smith and Jalen Reagor are the two top dogs, which does not exactly inspire any confidence in a bring-back. The Eagles looked absolutely horrendous against the Cowboys on Monday night, and while the KC defense has not exactly been great, this Eagles team is horrible. I will likely avoid rostering any Philly players this week, but if you do then you can hope Smith wakes up, as he had absolutely zero impact on the MNF game in Dallas.
B. We have a similar situation for the second stack that I am targeting, as we have two clear top dogs and then not much else. The difference with this game stack however, is that we do have a few very solid options on the other side of the ball. I will limit my Falcons stacks to Calvin Ridley and Kyle Pitts, although I do have more interest on the WFT tight end Logan Thomas than I have in Pitts. Pitts has not had anything more than three pedestrian performances thus far, which is expected out of tight ends, especially those of the rookie variety. However, he is priced up across the industry and I would rather take the ownership and salary savings that Thomas provides. Our other two options from WFT are Terry McLaurin and Antonio Gibson. While I would not want to get exposure to more than one WFT pass catcher per lineup, Taylor Heinicke actually looks much better than I expected, so this game certainly has shootout potential.
C. The final game that I will be looking to stack in NFL GPPs this Sunday is the Seattle Seahawks vs. the San Francisco 49ers. The Seahawks are always an interesting case because similar to other teams, they do have two clear top dogs in the offense. However unlike other teams, these two pass catchers both play WR, and when one goes off the other tends to disappear. If you look at any type of correlation data, you will see that other teams that have a top player at TE and a top player at WR tend to have those two players correlate much higher than Lockett and Metcalf correlate. Due to this, I typically only get access to one of these two pass catchers per lineup, but I would not fault you for going with both and hoping Russ throws 40+ passes. On the 49ers side of the ball, we have Deebo Samuel who is off to a scorching start this season, Brandon Aiyuk who is letting a ton of people down, and George Kittle who is arguably the third best tight end in the league behind Kelce and Waller. This may be recency bias, but I am definitely off of Aiyuk until he shows us something. For that reason, I will keep my bring-backs limited to Samuel and/or Kittle.
That will do it for this week’s article. If I am not taking down the million this Sunday, then I hope that it is a member of our WDS fam! Please make sure to check out our projection model by clicking here, and if you have any questions about GPP strategy or the top stacks for the week, I will be in our expert chat in Discord leading up to Sunday afternoon. Feel free to shoot me a DM or @ me in chat! Lastly, do not forget to subscribe to the WinDaily YouTube channel and follow me on Twitter: @AThr0ughZ!
