NFL DFS Power Sweep Winners: Nobody Owned The Quarterback

The quarterback in the winning Power Sweep lineup was 6.7% owned. That is the median across 55 Sundays, every week of the 2023, 2024 and 2025 seasons plus Week 1 of this one. In 39 of those 55 contests the winner's quarterback was under 10% owned, while only 59% of the field was that low. The Spy, DraftKings' single-entry contest on the same slate, tells the same story: 40 of 55 winners went under 10% at quarterback against 54% of the field.

That is the one thing the winners in these two contests do that the field does not. Almost everything else people argue about, the tight end price, the defense price, whether to put a running back in the flex, lands within a few points of the field rate.

In this study

• The Power Sweep: the double stack, the run-back, and the quarterback the field left alone.
• The Spy: lighter stacks, a punt tight end, and a lineup that is not contrarian anywhere except one spot.
• What Did Not Matter: the positions everyone spends their Tuesday debating.

Every number here comes from the Stokastic Post-Contest Simulator, which re-runs each finished contest and keeps every entry with its actual ownership. The Power Sweep is the larger of the two DraftKings runs each week, the three-entry max most weeks. The Spy is the largest single-entry version simulated that week. Field means every lineup in that contest.

The Power Sweep

Fifty-five winners. The average winning score was 216, the lowest 159, the highest 273. Fifty-three of the 55 winning lineups were unique. All 55 were different users.

Stack shape. Teammates rostered with the quarterback, defense not counted.

Quarterback plus two teammates is the winning shape, and single stacks are where the field lives. No winner in three seasons carried four teammates with the quarterback, and almost nobody in the field tried it. The two teammates are usually a wide receiver plus the tight end (12 winners) or two wide receivers (10). A running back stacked with the quarterback showed up 10 times, about the field rate.

The run-back. Sixty percent of winners carried at least one player from the opponent, against 57% of the field. That gap is small over three seasons but it has been growing: 44% of 2023 winners had a run-back, 56% in 2024, 78% in 2025. The quarterback's game filled four or more roster spots in 25 of the 55 winners, against 38% of the field.

The quarterback. The median winning quarterback cost $6,000, a hundred dollars under the field's $6,100. Price is not the separator. Ownership is. Thirty-nine of 55 winning quarterbacks were under 10% owned, and only seven were over 20%. Six winners paid $7,500 or more at the position, Patrick Mahomes once, Josh Allen three times, Lamar Jackson twice, and every one of those was under 22% owned that week.

Ownership overall. The winning lineup ran lighter than the field, a median 141% total ownership against 149%, without being extreme. The typical winner still carried one player around 40% owned, and 48 of 55 had at least one player under 5%. Three winners came in under 65% total ownership: Week 4 of 2023 and Weeks 1 and 2 of 2025.

The Sims saw more of them coming than the field would suggest. Forty-nine percent of winners had a positive Sim ROI before lock, against 34% of all entries, and the median winner ranked at the 65th percentile of its own contest on that number. Ten of the 55 were in the top 10% of their contest before a snap was played.

The Spy

Single entry rewards the same quarterback with less structure around him. Forty of 55 winners went under 10% owned at the position, against 54% of the field, at a median $6,000 in salary. Stacks are lighter than in the Power Sweep: quarterback plus two won 51% of the time against 39% of the field, but single stacks still won 38%, and a run-back appeared in 53% of winners, which is exactly the field rate.

The tight end is where Spy winners separate. Sixty percent spent under $4,000 at the position against 50% of the field, the median winning tight end cost $3,800, and two tight ends appeared in 27% of winners against 19% of the field. A tight end in the flex won 27% of the time against 19%, while a wide receiver in the flex won only 33% of the time against 44%.

The Spy winner is not a contrarian lineup. Median total ownership was 158% against the field's 156%, and Spy winners carried more players over 30% owned, 1.6 per lineup, than Power Sweep winners did. The one contrarian piece is the quarterback.

Three times in three seasons the same lineup won both contests on the same Sunday: a Dak Prescott double stack in Week 10 of 2023, a Jacoby Brissett triple stack in Week 11 of 2025, and a Jaxson Dart lineup with no teammate at all in Week 18 of 2025. Bijan Robinson appeared in 10 of the 55 winning Spy lineups, Jahmyr Gibbs in eight, and the Broncos defense won six times.

The Running Back Question

Two builds get asked about every week: the quarterback stacked with his own running back, and a running back paired with his own receiver or tight end without their quarterback.

Neither one wins more than the field uses it. In the Power Sweep the quarterback-and-running-back stack won 10 of 55 times, 18%, against 15% of the field. The running back with his receiver and no quarterback won 11 of 55, 20%, against 27% of the field. In the Spy those numbers are 11% against 15%, and 33% against 27%.

The pair ownership numbers look like leverage until you see where they come from. When Baker Mayfield won the 2024 Week 6 Power Sweep with Bucky Irving, that pair was in 1% of lineups. Irving was 58% owned. Mayfield was 2%. Nobody was avoiding Irving. They were avoiding Mayfield.

What Did Not Matter

Tight end price in the Power Sweep: median $4,100 for winners, $4,000 for the field. Defense price: $2,900 for both. The flex: 23 winners put a wide receiver there, 21 a running back, 11 a tight end, and the field splits the same way. Spending the full $50,000: 58% of winners, 53% of the field. Whether the lineup carried a second game stack outside the quarterback's game: 73% of winners, 79% of the field, so if anything the winners were a little more concentrated in one game.

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Last Sunday

Week 1 of 2026 fit the pattern in both contests.

The Power Sweep went to a Jordan Love lineup: Love at $5,700 and 1.5% owned, Christian Watson and Matthew Golden with him, Justin Jefferson as the run-back, Michael Mayer at $2,900 and the Buccaneers defense at $2,600. Total ownership 149% against a field average of 162%. It scored 236.4.

The Spy went to a Bryce Young lineup: Young at $5,200 and 3.4% owned, Jalen Coker with him, Mayer again at tight end, the Jets defense at $2,500, and 200% total ownership against a field average of 174%. It scored 252.8, and the quarterback was the only piece of it the field did not have.

The 6.7% quarterback is not a rule to force. Twenty-five of the 55 Power Sweep winners still used a quarterback over $6,000, and six paid up. But three seasons of winners agree on where the edge in these two contests has lived, and it is not at tight end.