Fantasy Football Draft Strategy – Best Stacks for 2024
Stacking has become more and more popular in the fantasy football community. A popular fantasy football draft strategy that you might have heard of is stacking players from the same teams. Is this the best fantasy football draft strategy? That’s for you to decide. With all of the tournaments on Underdog Fantasy, stacking is a very popular draft strategy. Today, I’ll be giving you some of the best stacks for fantasy football leagues in 2024.
Best Stacks for 2024 – Fantasy Football Draft Strategy
The idea behind stacking is all about correlation, especially in best ball formats. Since the quarterback and his weapons are correlated you’re only needing to hit on one outcome instead of multiple different outcomes. For example, if you draft the Kansas City Chiefs stack and Patrick Mahomes throws a touchdown to Travis Kelce then you are hitting on touchdowns from your quarterback and tight end. However, if you drafted Kelce and another quarterback from a different team to score the same amount of points, you need a Kelce touchdown and your quarterback to throw a separate touchdown.
There are many different stacking methods but I’ll focus on two different ones. The first is stacking the quarterback with a wide receiver and a tight end. For best ball leagues this is a great strategy. However, for classic redraft leagues, I typically like to keep the stack to a quarterback and then one wide receiver or tight end. The reason for that is that if the offense gets shut down then about 1/3 of your lineup for the week is going to be lower scoring.
Conversely, the second stacking strategy is a quarterback and running back. While you won’t get the double touchdown as often the idea behind that is locking up the offensive touchdowns. More than likely a good chunk of the offensive touchdowns will go through the quarterback and running back. For all fantasy football rankings, I will be using the half-point PPR scoring settings from FantasyPros.
Fantasy Football Draft Strategy – QB/WR/TE – Best Stacks
Dallas Cowboys (Dak Prescott, CeeDee Lamb, and Jake Ferguson)
This stack is very attainable if you’re able to get Lamb in the first round. That will likely require at minimum a top 3 draft pick. Although, the longer he holds out his ADP could start to slip. This stack excelled last season with Prescott finishing as the QB4, Lamb WR1, and Ferguson TE8. However, you can still get the discount on these players outside of Lamb who is being taken as the WR1. Prescott and Ferguson are being drafted as the ninth overall players at their respective position which is two very good values.
More yet, Prescott has a lot to play for this season with a massive contract looming in free agency. Ferguson has been slept on much of the off-season as the focus has all been on the contracts of Lamb and Prescott. However, Ferguson is an elite fantasy tight end option with huge upside as Prescott’s number 2 target. He finished last season with 761 receiving yards. He will likely exceed that in 2024 with the Cowboys cutting Michael Gallup and letting Tony Pollard walk leaving 124 targets vacated. Look for Ferguson’s volume to increase as he looks to solidify himself as an elite TE1.
If you’re lucky enough to get one of the top picks for Lamb then you have a couple of options for Ferguson and Prescott. You can take them at the 6/7 turn to guarantee the triple stack. However, depending on formats, league size, and which site you play things can change. You may be able to get one at the 6/7 turn and have the other drop to you in round 8. Ultimately, that strategy is a little risky but way more beneficial if it falls your way.
Buffalo Bills (Josh Allen, Curtis Samuel, and Dalton Kincaid)
The Bills made some huge personnel changes to the offense this off-season. They let Gabe Davis walk in free agency and traded Stefon Diggs to the Houston Texans. Between the two of them that leaves an absurd 241 vacated targets. To help replace them they went out and signed Curtis Samuel to a solid contract. Finally, they also drafted rookie Keon Coleman but I will be fully fading him at his ADP.
One of the biggest reasons the Bills felt comfortable letting Davis and Diggs go is the emergence of 2023 first-round pick Kincaid. Over his final four games last season including the two playoff games, Kincaid averaged 68.75 receiving yards. As expected, Kincaid is expected to play a massive role in the offense and should see plenty of opportunities this season.
Furthermore, Samuel had the best season of his career with Bills offensive coordinator Joe Brady in Carolina for one season in 2020. That year he finished with over 1,000 all-purpose yards for the only time in his career. Additionally, Samuel gets a massive quarterback upgrade and should slide right into being the number-one receiver for the Bills.
Moving forward, Samuel is going to be a vital part of the offense. That was shown in their first preseason game a few weeks ago when he saw two targets catching both for 23 yards in only two drives. Look for this stack to be one of the best stacks of the season.
Arizona Cardinals (Kyler Murray, Marvin Harrison Jr, and Trey McBride)
The Cardinals’ offense is shaping up to be a young exciting attack. They drafted Harrison Jr. with the fourth overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft. His talent is unbelievable and that’s why he is already being drafted as a WR1. Harrison is expected to have a Ja’Marr Chase-like rookie season and will need to do just that to make a good return on your investment as a top-15 draft pick.
McBride is a guy that has shot up draft boards this season now being taken as the TE3 overall. Last season, he excelled with Murray and there’s plenty of reasons to believe there’s more potential. McBride’s finishing as the TE1 overall is very possible and well within his range of outcomes. Last season this duo played only eight games together. In those eight games, McBride had 53 receptions 538 receiving yards, and two touchdowns. That would be 11.5 PPG which would have been right on par with Sam LaPorta and Kelce who both averaged 11.5 PPG last season.
Moreover, the Cardinals’ defense projects to be well below average despite having what seems to be a good young defensive head coach. However, they just don’t have the personnel to stop NFL-caliber offenses. That’s going to force the Cardinals to score a ton of points to keep up throughout the season. Ultimately, the majority of this offense will run through this trio. This makes them potentially one of the best stacks for the upcoming season.
Fantasy Football Draft Strategy – QB/RB – Best Stacks
Indianapolis Colts (Anthony Richardson and Jonathan Taylor)
This duo didn’t get much action together last season. Unfortunately, Richardson only appeared in four games in five weeks and Taylor missed the first four weeks because of an ankle injury/contract discussions. In the end, they only were on the field together for about 2 quarters. However, it was evident the impact Richardson was making on the Colts’ rushing attack despite not having the elite talent of Taylor on the field.
Zack Moss was averaging an insane 107.6 rushing yards per game in games that Richardson played in. We all know Taylor is by far the superior talent compared to Moss, Taylor has the potential as he did a few seasons ago to finish as the overall RB1. Moreover, Richardson has the same potential to finish as the overall QB1 despite being taken as the QB5 overall according to FantasyPros consensus rankings. This will likely be one of if not the most potent QB/RB stack in fantasy football this season.
San Francisco 49ers (Brock Purdy and Christian McCaffrey)
You’re going to need the top pick to make this stack work unless McCaffrey somehow slips in your draft. However, this is one of the more underrated stacks in football. Purdy and McCaffrey connected for seven touchdowns last season setting a career-high for McCaffrey.
Furthermore, there are plenty of question marks around Purdy’s weapons with Deebo Samuel and George Kittle’s lengthy injury histories and a potential Brandon Aiyuk trade still on the table. Yes, McCaffrey also has a history of injuries. However, he’s been healthy for the last two seasons so I’m not too worried about it.
This stack is the perfect build for a hero RB team. You can take McCaffrey early and then hammer wide receivers and grab an elite tight end before taking Purdy at the beginning of round 9. Last season Purdy finished as the QB6 overall. While he doesn’t offer elite upside he does have a very high floor which makes him a perfect target in the mid/late rounds. In the end, this might be one of the best stacks for fantasy football purposes in 2024.
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