Week Five NFL DFS GPP Stacks for FanDuel, DraftKings

Mark Kieffer's NFL DFS stacks for FanDuel and DraftKings tournaments for Week 5 of the 2021 NFL season. These GPP stacks are worth considering for daily fantasy football lineups.

Welcome back to another week of NFL DFS GPP Stacks! This is where I talk about the slate and give three stacks you should consider for your GPP lineups!

I generally make 3-5 lineups, because it is hard to nail every stack. I use a different stack for each GPP lineup and hope one of them pops to the top of the standings! If I win a GPP with one lineup and do not cash in the other six, I will still have a very nice day and win a good chunk of cash!

Before just diving into the picks for this week, some reminders about guidelines I use for stacks:

I want games with high point-scoring totals and close point spreads. The scoring part is obvious (more scoring = more fantasy points) but the game being close makes a bring-back player viable and keeps the team that is up playing with urgency throughout the game.

I generally want to fade a stack combination that is projected to be the most popular in the slate. This means I may choose to stack up that team differently than the crowd, or I may do an outright fade. With that said, onto the picks!

Slate Context

This is something I think is important to look at when considering stacks for your lineups. For the main Sunday slate, 11 games are being played with just three games having points totals above 50 points. What we could see is consolidated percent rostered and perhaps some good leverage opportunities this week compared to last week.

(1) Green Bay Packers

This game against Cincinnati has a point total of 48 and Green Bay is a three-point favorite. 48 points aren't that far off of the highest total on the slate of 52 points. Davante Adams has a 36% target share, but then the other options fall off as the next highest players are Robert Tonyan and Marques Valdez-Scantling with a 12% target share each. Valdez-Scantling is out for Sunday. Randal Cobb received 17% of the targets last week. While it is difficult to find a third player to stack, this might be a situation to pair Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams and then bring it back with a player on Cincinnati such as  Tyler Boyd or Ja'Marr Chase.

The risk is that Green Bay does have the No. 8 passing defense in the NFL, allowing just 209.5 passing yards per game. Cincinnati is No. 13 allowing 229.5 passing yards.

In general, I think the field will be underexposed to the game because both teams are in the bottom 10 teams in rushing defense. Going with the passing games is a place to look to be different from the field.

(2) Tennessee Titans

This game has a high point total and bad passing defenses. The total is set to 49 points with the Titans favored by 4.5 points. With how well Derrick Henry has been playing, if people go to this game they will look at him, but they should be looking to the air as well in my opinion. Jacksonville has the No. 30 pass defense, allowing 312.2 passing yards per game. A.J. Brown has been practicing and should be back this week. Julio Jones is still up in the air.

On the other side of the ball, Tennessee has a bad pass defense as well, they are 23rd allowing 266.8 passing yards per game.

This is a great environment to roster receivers on both sides of the ball to get some correlation going. I like Marvin Jones Jr. and Laviska Shenault Jr. the best on the Jacksonville side.

(3) Dallas Cowboys

Dallas is the obvious spot to go, and this will likely be the most popular stack on the slate as the game has the highest total on the slate (52 points) and it's the Dallas Cowboys, one of the most popular teams in the NFL. The Giants are No. 20 in the NFL in passing yards allowed at 259.2 yards per game, and Dallas is No. 31 at 315.2 passing yards per game. There will be bring-back opportunities. CeeDee Lamb, Amari Cooper, and Dalton Schultz are all viable for stacking here. Kenny Golladay and Saquon Barkley are guys to look at on the Giants side for the bring back.

If the Dallas side becomes uber chalk, an idea would be to stack New York and then bring back with a Cowboys player instead. Another idea to get leverage is to target the Dallas run game here. New York has the No. 21 rush defense.

If you do stack Dallas, you will have to get different in other positions. You cannot eat chalk at running back, tight end, or defense if stacking up Dallas in a tournament this week. I tend to create 3-5 lineups and am trying to win a GPP. I will either get weird with Dallas or I will just fade Dallas altogether because if a Dak-Cooper-Lamb stack goes off and I have them, I do not have confidence that my lineup is going to be that number 1 lineup to overtake all the other Dallas stacks.

Final Thoughts

With fewer games on the slate than previous weeks and fewer games over 50, it can create opportunities where a handful of players from stacks are rostered at a high percentage. A way to get potential leverage on the field is to go to those games with totals in the high 40s that might be overlooked or to go to the games in which the run game will be popular and hope they pass the ball more.

If you play GPPs and you are either afraid to fade Dallas in this spot, or you know that if you fade Dallas and they go off you will go on tilt, then GPPs are not for you. The quickest way to win a GPP is to be different from the field and hope the chalk fails and whichever direction you go do well.

When I play tournaments and am picking three to five lineups to use, I am OK if two of the three or four of the five miss, because I know that if one hits, it will be a profitable day. I also know the chances of all my lineups missing are higher than the chances of having a top 1% lineup on the day. Bankroll management is important when playing GPPs: stick to no more than two to five percent of your bankroll on entries.

Thanks for reading, and I wish you the best of luck with your Week 5 DFS Stacks!

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