Quarterback and Wide Receiver Stack Strategy: Part II

Written By: Steve Weber

Date: 7/13/2023

Updated: (not yet)

What is This Article… What is “Stacking”?

          In part I of this series we looked at the best and easiest stacks (specifically for Underdog Fantasy) for Best Ball purposes. It isn’t that the information provided cannot be helpful / useful for redraft leagues; but, we can do better! In Part II we will narrow down the field and look at, only,  the relevant stacks for redraft leagues. In addition, I’ve changed the source for the ADP’s of players; pulling that data from Fantasy Pros instead of Underdog.

          In part I, I went over a story talking about PSA (Practice/Plan, Support, Adapt). I won’t re-hash the story but, the “S”, support, refers to having the tools to help you adapt. This is one of those tools that can help you to build a stronger roster by helping you to understand the whos, whats, and wheres of the easiest and strongest quarterback and wide receiver stacks for the 2023 fantasy football season. Portions of this article / tool rely on my rankings, which are ever changing, so I do intend to revisit this article with an update in the early portion of August. You can see when that happens at the top of the article (under the title).

          If you’re unaware of what stacking is, in fantasy football, it is when you take two players from the same team. Technically you could stack two wide receivers, however the most common stack in fantasy football is the quarterback and wide receiver stack. For example, drafting both Patrick Mahomes and Kadarius Toney would be a stack. The reason quarterback and wide receiver stacks are the most common is because they have the most positive correlation when it comes to success for your fantasy football team.

          Generally speaking, I think the best strategy you can have for drafting is to take the best player available. But, whose best player available? Mine, The Fantasy Footballers (Mike’s? Jason’s? Andy’s?), your gut feeling?

          What about positional value? Should that be taken into consideration? Technically speaking, in 2022, Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts and Joe Burrow were the top-4 scoring players. Should they be the first four off of the board? Aaron Rodgers had the 13th most fantasy points at the quarterback position, 26th most across all positions; putting him higher than both the 7th best running back and wide receiver. Should the 13th quarterback of the draft be taken in the early 3rd round ahead of guys like Derrick Henry and A.J. Brown? No, they shouldn’t.

         All of this to say, when drafting, whether you think you utilize a strategy or not, you do. If you were to draft simply based on “best player available” and your definition of “best player available” is the player who will score the most fantasy points; well, you’d end up with a lot of quarterbacks on your roster.

          The best player available, based on your roster, will change as the draft moves along. You also may have someone who YOU believe is the best player available, but who is not expected to be drafted for another three rounds. Even experts can have wildly different opinions on individual players and how “good” they are. If you’re aware of the probability of players making it to your next pick, you can better navigate a draft. By taking the tools you find to be most helpful to your style of drafting, and putting them to practice, you can better predict a draft and nail down more of your “targets”; players you want on your team. Or, in this instance, stacks you would like on your team.

          Apologies in advance, portions of this article & the data referenced are not working well for mobile users. Please check it out on a PC or (hopefully) on a Tablet should work better!

The Tools | The Support

          This data sheet will look similar to what you may have already seen in Part I of this series but I assure you it’s different. The differences begin with the fact that I cut the field down to the quarterbacks and wide receivers that I think are worth drafting (for one reason or another). We went from 33 quarterbacks down to my top 23 and from 98 wide receivers down to 60 of my top 79; you can’t stack a wide receiver if you don’t draft the quarterback for the team.

 

          The other big changes, which are not explained (directly below) while explaining each column, is that I used average draft positions from Fantasy Pros website instead of Underdog’s. Thus the “round” column (D) has been updated. In addition, the WR Stack Score’s are now based on my player rankings, not player ADP.

          First up is the main sheet, it has all of the data sorted and visually available in one place.

Columns explained:

  • (C) Easy Stack Score – On a scale of 1 to 23, how “easy” is it to find a wide receiver to stack with that quarterback. The lower the score, the easier. This is based upon both the average amount of picks between each WRs ADP and their QBs ADP, as well as the sum total of those differences (quantity obviously helps)
  • (D) Round – What round each QB and WR goes in, based on the current ADP via Fantasy Pros (as of  July 11th until further updated). Some of the numbers have highlights:
    • Green = Easiest QB/WR target of that respectable round
    • Yellow  = WR is drafted within +/- 18 – 24 picks of the QB  |  AKA, not a guarantee you can make the stack happen
    • Orange = WR is drafted within +/- 12 – 18 picks of the QB  |  AKA, a fairly tough stack to pull off
    • Red = WR is drafted within +/- 0 – 12 picks of the QB  |  AKA, a very hard stack to pull off
  • (F) My Rank – I used my personal rankings instead of the players ADP on this sheet
  • (H) WR Stack Score – On a scale of 4 to 197, how “strong/good” is the correlating WR and QB stack, based on both the QB’s and WR’s positional ADP/Rank. The lower the score, the better. The QBs are weighted to be equally as important as the WRs in that score. With 33 QBs & 97 WRs, each “rank via ADP” of the QB counted as 3 points. For example, A.J. Brown received a score of 12. Jalen Hurts goes off the board as the 2nd QB. 2 x 3 = 6 points. A.J. Brown goes off the board as the 6th WR; 6 points. 6 + 6 = 12

You can download this excel sheet via THIS LINK

Top 10 Easiest QBs to Stack

 

(1) Patrick Mahomes

(2) Brock Purdy

(3) Lamar Jackson

(3) Matthew Stafford

(5) Russell Wilson

(6) Daniel Jones

(7) Kyler Murray

(8) Aaron Rodgers

(8) Tua Tagovailoa

(10) Anthony Richardson

Top 10 Hardest QBs to Stack

 

(1) Jalen Hurts

(2) Bryce Young

(3) Joe Burrow

(4) Justin Herbert

(5) Josh Allen

(6) Trevor Lawrence

(7) Justin Fields

(8) Jared Goff

(8) Geno Smith

(10) Kirk Cousins

(10) Deshaun Watson

          Above are the easiest and hardest quarterbacks to stack with a wide receiver, any wide receiver (on the same team).

 

          Below are all of the quarterback and wide receiver stacks of which you may not always be able to complete, if you’re aiming to do so, within ADP. You could always reach or a player could fall to you; but typically, due to how near each other both players are drafted, there’s a decent to high chance one of the players will be taken by another drafter.

The 17 Hardest QB / WR Stacks

 

(1) Jalen Hurts / Devonta Smith

(2) Justin Fields / DJ Moore

(3) Trevor Lawrence / Christian Kirk

(4) Bryce Young / Jonathan Mingo

(4) Kirk Cousins / Jordan Addison

(6) Joe Burrow / Tee Higgins

(6) Justin Herbert / Mike Williams

(8) Aaron Rodgers / Allen Lazard

(9) Dak Prescott / Brandin Cooks

(9) Justin Herbert / Keenan Allen

(11) Josh Allen / Stefon Diggs

(11) Jared Goff / Jameson Williams

(13) Jalen Hurts / A.J. Brown

(14) Trevor Lawrence / Calvin Ridley

(15) Kyler Murray / Rondale Moore

(16) Bryce Young / Adam Thielen

(17) Geno Smith / Jaxon Smith-Njigba

         Just because it’s easy to find a wide receiver to stack with your quarterback of choice, that doesn’t mean it’s bad. Somewhat to the opposite point, often the hardest quarterback stacks are strong; but, they’re not always good. For instance, Bryce Young and both of his top targets are tough to get on the same team… but there are plenty of stacks which should be better.

          So, below is a data sheet (which you can DOWNLOAD HERE) that looks at the best & worst stacks, based on my, current, rankings. This is the same information which can be found in column (H) “WR Stack Score”, but in order from best to worst.

          It’s important to note that I have weighted the quarterbacks to be equally important to the wide receivers relative to the group. Thus, the quarterbacks received points equal to  – 2.5x “their ranking” . The reasoning for this is because there are roughly 2.5x more wide receivers as their are quarterbacks in the data set. What this allows for is equal representation, for example: The #1 ranked QB (2.5 points) and the 75th ranked WR (75 points) would receive equal points to the #25 QB (75 points) and the #1 ranked WR (1 point). Do the math… fine, fine… it’s not exact, but it’s close enough!

          Additionally, I highlighted the first column the same as column (D) “Round” from the parent sheet shown above; as it’s a little easier to read on this sheet. Those are the 17 hardest QB/WR stacks.

          Is the 2.5x their ranking for quarterbacks too much? It depends on how you look at it. I can confidently say I believe it’s a better method than how I looked at things in my Mock Draft Monday video where I went over what’s found in the first article; because, I was over-valuing the wide receivers input into the stacks at that point in time (before I made Stack Scores).

The 10 Best QB / WR Stacks (via my CURRENT rankings)

 

(1) Jalen Hurts / A.J. Brown

(2) Josh Allen / Stefon Diggs

(3) Joe Burrow / Ja’Marr Chase

(4) Jalen Hurts / DeVonta Smith

(5) Joe Burrow / Tee Higgins

(6) Tua Tagovailoa / Tyreek Hill

(7) Deshaun Watson / Amari Cooper

(8) Dak Prescott / CeeDee Lamb

(9) Justin Herbert / Keenan Allen

(9) Tua Tagovailoa / Jaylen Waddle

The 10 Worst QB / WR Stacks (via my CURRENT rankings)

 

(1) Kyler Murray / Michael Wilson

(2) Matthew Stafford / Van Jefferson

(3) Jordan Love / Jayden Reed

(4) Bryce Young / Adam Thielen

(5) Bryce Young / Jonathan Mingo

(6) Russell Wilson / Tim Patrick

(7) Anthony Richardson / Josh Downs

(8) Russell Wilson / Marvin Mims

(9) Jordan Love / Romeo Doubs

(10) Aaron Rodgers / Mecole Hardman

          Do I agree with every wide receivers stack score compared to one another? No. The two that I believe stand out the most would be Amari Cooper at #7 and Justin Jefferson at #15. The reason for my hesitancy on Amari Cooper is not due to Deshaun Watson but it comes in two parts:

  1. My ranking of Deshaun Watson is a riskier ranking, I’m betting on him returning to his form of several years ago
  2. I have Amari Cooper ranked quite high right now, every time I go to lower him I look back to why I have him as high as I do… and I look at the guys right behind him and I haven’t convinced myself to move him down (YET)

That said, if Deshaun Watson is who he was then there’s a very good shot for Amari Cooper to meet my current ranking for him. In that event, they would be a very good stack; so, being the #7 best stack does make some sense.

          When it comes to Justin Jefferson and Kirk Cousins being the #15 stack, this is all the fault of my ranking of Kirk Cousins. A ranking which is not a prediction of where he ends the season, but is rather low for him because I have several quarterbacks I think are worth taking a risk on in order to get something “better” than him. If I had to wager on it, Kirk Cousins will end the season as the QB #14 on the 2023 season, that would boost Justin Jefferson and himself up to the #8 spot behind Amari Cooper.

          I’m unsure of how to end this, in case you missed it there are options to download the two excel sheets if you would like to. I hope you found something useful in this information!