Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season is finally here. The first Sunday presents us with a massive 13-game main slate and lots of opportunity across the bigger sites like FanDuel and DraftKings where we can chase big top prizes and large prize pools in daily fantasy. To gain leverage in GPPs, stacking is a strategy that every DFS player should use. Rostering a quarterback with one or more of his pass catchers gives lineups the upside it needs to have a chance at finishing near the top of the leaderboards. How you construct your NFL DFS stacks can be of vital importance to a successful GPP lineup as certain receivers will have different usage, upside and ownership potential each week.
The Stokastic Top Stacks Tool is a vital part of the Stokastic NFL DFS projections as it helps us narrow down the potential top scoring NFL DFS stacks on the slate but also provides with info like best value and the top leverage opportunities. If you haven’t checked out the Top Stacks Tool yet you should (after reading this article) and we’ll also use it to help us breakdown some of the top opportunities for Week 1 below.
Top NFL DFS Stacks for Week 1 on DraftKings + FanDuel
Top Stack: Kansas City Chiefs
The Kansas City Chiefs implied team total sits at right around 30.0 (give or take a +/- 0.25) and they enter Week 1 as -6.0 road favorites. Both of those numbers might get higher by Sunday afternoon. The Cardinals secondary has been decimated by injuries with Antonio Hamilton and Trayvon Mullen (who they just trade for) out for Week 1 and they’ll be throwing out practice squad and waiver pickups in three and four man sets against the Chiefs speedy receiver corps. There should be no surprise that Kansas City is trending as the number one stack in the Stokastic Top Stack Tool, but the gap between first and second place is worth noting. The Chiefs rank 5% higher than the second place Eagles to end the slate as top stack and we even have Patrick Mahomes trending with slightly lower ownership projections than a couple of other QBs this week — thanks mainly to his high salary across the industry. Don’t for to sign up for NFL DFS platinum, just $7 for 7 days of full Stokastic access by the best DFS players in the world. Click here to sign up.
The only issue with stacking the Chiefs is figuring out who to pair with Mahomes, but that’s also a potential area of opportunity. Travis Kelce should be one of the league leaders in targets again in 2022 but it’s worth noting that Cardinals defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s schemes have been great at limiting production to the TE position — they ceded the third fewest receptions to the position in 2021. Kelce’s the clear lead chalk in ownership projections at the moment on Stokastic and fading him — while certainly a high variance play — will bring down the ownership levels on this stack quite massively.
A receiver heavy Chiefs stack on the other hand should get us good leverage, especially with the Arizona wide-outs (or what’s left of them) all projecting with big ownership. Despite being listed first on the depth chart having just a $5,200 salary on DraftKings, WR Juju Smith-Schuster is still projecting with sub-10% ownership this weekend. Even if the Cardinals move over their top corner in Byron Murphy to the slot to counteract Schuster’s slot presence it’s still a good matchup for the former Steeler as Murphy ranked just 86th on PFF grades last year among all cornerbacks. We should also also expect one of Marquez Valdes-Scantling or Mecole Hardman to have a decent game just given the state of Arizona’s depth chart. Given what we saw in the pre-season expect Valdes-Scantling to have the much safer floor between these two, at least early in the season. His role as the number one outside receiver should mean he gets looks in all phases of the offense and if his red zone usage from preseason and training camp keeps up, he could push for the leader of this eclectic group before long.
Awesemo Top Stack Projection: 14.3%
Awesemo QB Ownership: 8.9%
Top Low-Owned Stack: Miami Dolphins
The Miami Dolphins are getting a little bit of hype as a potential home favorite play in the Week 1 betting circles but their DFS sentiment is still neutral to cool at best. They rank out as a top-five play, though, in the top stack % category of the Stokastic Top Stacks Tool which suggests the upside is better for Miami than the field is currently projecting for them. Tua Tagovailoa is also projecting well outside the top 10 quarterbacks this week from an ownership perspective. Miami’s new system means there’s a wide range of outcomes available to this offense in Week 1 but that variance and volatility also creates opportunity. One area we should be comfortable expecting the Dolphins to improve in is the deep passing game. They ranked just 24th in yards per attempt in 2021 but should benefit from an offensive-minded head coaching and new personnel at receiver.
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Both Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle have massive ceilings as well given their after-the-catch ability and they’ll be taking on a Patriots secondary that’s entering the year without their top corner from 2021 in JC Jackson. The lower ownership available on Tagovailoa means we should be comfortable pairing him with either of his top receivers, but the true Dolphin GPP play this week will include second-year player Jaylen Waddle. Waddle will likely see his sentiment rise towards the end of the week (now that he’s returned to a full practice) but he was still trending with sub-5% ownership on Stokastic as of Friday. Waddle connected on 74% of his targets from Tagovailoa in 2021 and easily led all Miami receivers in red zone usage as well. It’s tough to bet on that connection fizzling in Week 1 and using Waddle over Hill in simple two-man Miami stacks will give you a much more original build in big fields.
Given the potential with both men, a double Miami WR stack is certainly in play, though, especially with Hill being available at under $7,000 on DraftKings. Pairing Hill and Waddle together is also going to be a good way to gain leverage on Miami stacks that only feature Hill. Regardless of how you go about it, Miami stacks featuring some combo of Tagovailoa and Waddle set up as a great combo of value, upside and lower ownership for those bigger contests in Week 1.
Awesemo Top Stack Projection: 2.3%
Awesemo QB Ownership: 3.0%
Tournament Leverage Stack: Detroit Lions
The Eagles are going to be popular this week as Jalen Hurts has the highest ownership projection of any quarterback on the slate, and his popularity will naturally bring up his receivers ownership as well. The Eagles aren’t necessarily going to be the easiest team to pin down though for fantasy purposes as they have multiple weapons and a new WR1 in AJ Brown whom we’ve yet to see in this offense. The Lions, on the other hand, are quite easy to project for week one as they have both a true workhorse back in D’Andre Swift and a receiver in Amon Ra St. Brown who was top three in receptions and targets over the final six weeks of 2021.
Swift and St. Brown will certainly carry some ownership but they will likely be used more as one-offs or run-it-back options in Eagles stacks for Week 1 — of which there will be plenty. Using both men together creates solid leverage over those who chose to heavily stack the Eagles and also gives us a chance to finish our stack with a cheap QB in Jared Goff, whose only real path to fantasy success is through sheer volume in the short passing game anyways. St. Brown and Goff showed serious correlation towards the end of 2021 with Goff throwing for nine TDs in his final four games — which was directly tied to when St. Brown became the focal part of the Detroit offense. Swift should only give Goff more access to cheap after-the-catch yardage and TDs and he was dominating red zone looks for Detroit prior to getting injured.
Using the Lions brings risk given their lower projected team total and unathletic QB. The trade-off though is that if we do get 40+ passes, and this game turns into a legit shootout, we know with a relatively high degree of certainty that St. Brown and Swift will be dialing up massive fantasy scores. While you should certainly have exposure to the Eagles players don’t be afraid to dial up some Lions stacks either as St. Brown and Swift should be considered extremely high ceiling options in games with close point spreads and higher totals — like we have week one — until they prove otherwise.
Awesemo Top Stack Projection: 1.6%
Awesemo QB Ownership: 1.1%
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