Is it Smart to Stack WRs Against Opposing QBs?

Have you ever wondered whether playing the WR of your opponent’s QB is a valuable strategy? Consider this scenario: you are facing Patrick Mahomes in your weekly matchup, and have both Rashee Rice and Marvin Harrison Jr., but can only start one – do you go with the handcuff play and put in Rice, or do you go with the arguably better wide-out in MHJ? While this is a difficult question, it’s nothing a little data analytics can’t solve! In this article, I will be breaking down the numbers on when it is and isn’t worth it to stack receivers against your opponent. Let’s jump into things.

Approach

To answer this question, we first have to break QBs and WRs into different groupings – naturally, the strategic advantage might change depending on whether the QB is a top or bottom-tier passer. The same goes for WR quality. With this, I split both QBs and WRs into three groups each: 1-10, 11-20, and 21-50, based on total fantasy points. After gathering this information through the 2013-2024 seasons, I plotted matrices depicting the various combinations of receivers that you would have to decide between, for every tier of QBs. The matrices compare WR1, WR2, and WR3 for receivers on the same team as the QB at hand (in this case the receiver you would be using to stack against your opponent), to WRs 1-10, WRs 11-20, and WRs 21-50 overall on different teams than the QB at hand (these are the receivers that would not be a stack against your opponent’s QB).

In comparison, I evaluated every grouping’s expected points above or below the opposing QB’s output. In other words, if you were to start one of the groupings, say the WR1 of the opposing QB’s team vs. any top 10 WR on a different team, which would perform better in comparison to the opposing QB? In doing this, we can compare which will better cancel out the other team’s QB score.

Analysis

First, let’s look at the QB 1-10 tier. The plot below shows the comparisons for every WR level – the split line divides the two axes, so the same team (stacking WR) is the number on top and the different team (non-stacking WR) is the number on the bottom. In this, we see that stacking the WR1 against your opponent is only feasible if your other option is not a top-10 WR. You can reference how WR1s of the same team as your opposing QB have an expected value of -2.4 points compared to that QB, while the WRs 11-20 group has an expected value of -2.2. Stacking a WR2 against the opposing QB is only worth it if your other option is a WR 21-50.

We can also compare the standard deviation of expected points between all the groupings to see if it is a safer bet to stack against QBs. While we see that the standard deviation is almost always lower for stacking receivers, it’s unclear how significant a takeaway this is, as the standard deviation squares each value, so a high value may simply indicate more booms rather than busts. In this, we can only conclude that using receivers to stack may be a safer bet in cancelling out the opposing QB’s performance, but not stacking can yield a higher return. This result holds true for every QB tier, so I won’t be displaying the standard deviation plots again for the remaining analysis.

Next, let’s look at the QBs 11-20 tier. For this tier, the results are more extreme than at the top QB level. The only time stacking is worth it against the second tier of QBs is when you have their WR1 and your other option is a WR 21-50, so it’s kind of a no-brainer already.

Moving on to the final tier of QBs, QBs 21-50, it is again only worth starting a WR1 to stack if your other option is a WR 21-50. Again, no brainer.

Conclusion

In summary, going out of your way to stack a WR against a QB is not worth it, unless you have a the WR1 of the opposing QBs team, and your other option is not a top-10 WR (assuming that WR1 is not also a top-10 receiver, in which case it would be ideal to start them!). We also concluded that while it might be safer overall to stack the opposition if your goal is to cancel out the other team’s QB, there is not much upside. Since WR and QB points are strongly correlated between players on the same team, stacking against your opponent is typically not worth it – unless you have a strong advantage in the matchup and need a safe bet to limit a boom performance from your opponent’s QB, it’s safe to stick to this principle.