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Description
(Written the Friday before kickoff)
This week, I am going to unite our Trends and Stacks tools in an unholy union to dominate the world. But remember that I am writing this part of the article on the Friday preceding Week 5, so if my plays are all duds disregard what I just said. Or consider this to be just a small glimpse into a broader sample and consider the bigger picture instead.
Anyway . . .
I don’t need to explain the concept of stacking in NFL DFS to you. If you’re here, you already know. This week, I’m not going to look at a trend in a vacuum. Instead, I’m going to create a trend with the intention of locating ‘stackable’ quarterbacks and then creating lineups around those quarterbacks using the Stacks tool.
What do we want in a stackable QB?
Here’s my take:
– I want a QB with a high adjusted yards-per-attempt score.
– I want a QB who will have opportunities within the red zone.
– Since I’m stacking QBs with wide receivers, I want QBs who throw a high percentage of passes to WRs.
View this week’s trend.
The Matches
With a list of QBs in hand, I’m now going to use our Stacks tool within our NFL Player Models. Here, I’m looking for stacks comprised of one QB and two WRs.
After clicking ‘Build Stacks’, I selected the highest-rated stack involving each matched QB. There aren’t many surprises here:
1. New York Jets (Fitzpatrick-Marshall-Enunwa)
The Ryan Fitzpatrick–Brandon Marshall–Quincy Enunwa stack was the third-highest rated 1 QB-2 WR stack using the Bales Model this week on FanDuel. Per Bryan Mears’ Market Share Report, the Jets’ distribution of target shares looks like this over the first four weeks of the season:
With Eric Decker out, big pieces of the pie could be expected to grow even larger as additional targets are funneled to Marshall and Enunwa. Neither Marshall nor Enunwa is expected to be low-owned, but stacking them together with Fitzpatrick, who is projected to be owned under five percent, should provide me with the necessary differentiation in guaranteed prize pools.
2. Philadelphia Eagles (Wentz-Matthews-Agholor)
The problem with Carson Wentz is that he ranks outside the top 15 at his position in the Bales Model. Also, there is a lot of uncertainty in the Eagles offense at the time of writing: The running back position is a big question mark, and the reintroduction of Zach Ertz into the passing game could impact target distribution.
The good news is that the ownership is expected to be nonexistent and this is actually a pretty good spot. The Eagles this week are coming off a bye and projected to score 24.5 points against the Lions.
3. Dallas Cowboys (Prescott-Beasley-Butler)
Cole Beasley leads the Cowboys in target share in 2016, while Brice Butler tied Jason Witten with nine targets in Week 4 against the 49ers. Since Dak Prescott throws the ball 2.5 times per game inside the 10-yard line and since he has thrown to WRs 60 percent of the time in 2016, a cheap, low-owned Prescott-Beasley-Butler stack has a chance of doing well.
Results
The Jets did not play well and yet Fitzpatrick and Marshall both finished with positive Plus/Minus values. Enunwa may not have been fully healthy, with a knee injury making his status murky throughout the week. Still, Marshall and Enunwa combined for 22 targets on Fitzpatrick’s 38 pass attempts. Had the Jets made it to the 20-point mark that Vegas had projected, this stack would have likely performed quite well rather than just okay.
Wentz exceeded his salary-based implied point total, but both Jordan Matthews and Nelson Agholor fell short. Matthews came into Week 5 with a 25.74 percent target share but finished Sunday’s game with only four targets. Agholor led Philadelphia in targets with seven but was largely unproductive. Wentz’s target distribution was much flatter in this game, with five players seeing at least four targets.
The Bengals fell behind in this game 28-0, and that’s probably one reason Prescott’s day was not bigger than it was. He was limited to just 24 pass attempts in the win. Butler had a TD called back, and it was Terrance Williams who led receivers in yardage. Prescott and Beasley both exceeded salary-based expectations, but Butler fell about three points short. Ezekiel Elliott saw more than two targets for the first time all season, receiving four in the game.
Conclusion
Many people use the Trends tool to find situations that return the highest Plus/Minus values. But that’s not all you can do with trends. You can also look for situations that commonly return negative Plus/Minus values so that you will know to downgrade players. You can even use it for other purposes entirely. Here, I knew I wanted to stack a QB with WRs, so I wanted to find QBs who throw the highest percentage of passes to their WRs.
The point is that there is an endless amount of data out there, so be creative with it!
