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Season-long correlation benefits gamers in both best ball and traditional leagues. Whether you’re setting your lineup or not is entirely irrelevant to wanting your top players’ probabilities of outperforming their expectations to be correlated. You want your team to score the most points in both formats, and by drafting a set of players whose individual outcomes are dependent on as few variables as possible, you are increasing your probability that all of them hit.  

We posit that the strength of stacking in best ball formats stem almost entirely from season-long correlation rather than week-to-week correlation. On the other hand, by stacking in traditional leagues, you benefit from both season-long correlation and week-to-week correlation. By implication, we expect stacking in traditional leagues to have a larger increase in your win probability than in best ball leagues. 

Courtland Sutton is a proper alpha receiver. Where will Deshaun Watson play football in the future?

Why Justin Fields and Trey Lance go earlier in best ball leagues. Anthony Miller going to Houston opens up targets for Tarik Cohen.

Brandon Aiyuk flashed high-end upside when he was on the field. He was elite on a per game basis, and his opportunity metrics legitimize that production. His athleticism, versatility, and belonging to a Kyle Shanahan offense all raise his floor and ceiling. However, there are unknowns surrounding him. Trey Lance’s immaturity as a passer, and how Aiyuk performs alongside a healthy George Kittle and Deebo Samuel, will be what decides his value for the next five years.

Tee Higgins is a supremely talented, young, traditional wide receiver who is attached to a great quarterback. With a crowded receiver room, Higgins’ value will be defined by how many targets he receives relative to Tyler Boyd and Ja’Marr Chase. Regardless, at worst, he will be the second option on a fantastic offense and be productive in that role. But he also has perennial top-12 upside.

Cam Akers is still ahead of Henderson in dynasty. Comparing Zach Wilson and Mac Jones.

Who is Dax Milne? Trey Lance was boosted by Patrick Mahomes.

The clearest difference between best ball and DFS tournaments is the length of the play period. This affects how you analyze variance. In DFS, maximize volatility within a single game to increase your ceiling. Between two players with similar weekly medians you will always opt for a Mecole Hardman over a Hunter Renfrow. This has been accepted as a perfect translation to best ball and I don’t understand why.

Have you ever heard the term “play whoever you want” in DFS? It’s often misinterpreted. Nobody recommends filling out lineups with $1,000 salary left over in the milli-maker because you wanted to ‘get your guys;’ yet this attitude has been adopted by many in best ball. ‘Play whoever you want’ actually means ‘any set of correlated pieces can be viable in a given slate as part of a constructed lineup.’

College Dominator Rating represents a player’s “market share” or his percentage of his team’s offensive production. When comparing College Dominator Rating, the 2021 class takes a step back. The 2014 class holds an edge with 15 players posting greater than a 35.0-percent mark. The 2021 class trails with 12 WRs over 35.0-percent and an average Dominator Rating of 31.6-percent.

Speed Score places a premium on 40-time, but also factors in body weight and length. The 2021 struggles in this department with only 10 players (29-percent) with a Speed Score of 100.0 or higher. In comparison, 14 players (41-percent) met this cutoff for the 2014 group. This is not a surprise as many WRs weighed lighter and measured shorter than anticipated during the 2021 pro day circuit.

Taysom Hill just became the favorite to start the season under center for the New Orleans Saints. Adam Trautman is surging for all the right reasons.

Cam Akers knows Terrell Suggs came back from a torn Achilles the same season. Why the Texans should trade Deshaun Watson.

Football is a grueling sport to predict, and this is where stacking enters the fold. Stacking allows us to limit how many different variables we have to get correct each week. In a sport where so many variables are outside our control, it’s nice to only need to root for one team’s offense to succeed to ensure that two or more players enter our best ball lineup with spike weeks.

Stacking is not the only way to succeed in fantasy football, you can of course just pick the right players. However, player-centric analysis is difficult, comes with large error bars, and is extremely time-consuming. The beauty of stacking is that you don’t even need to do much player research. You can just focus on stacking players from teams you expect to pass a lot.

In fantasy terms, we should be targeting players that command a large share of their teams’ targets. But be warned, not all Target Shares are created equal. It is important that we look at a team’s total pass volume to provide greater context when it comes to appreciating how much work a pass-catcher will get.

Target Rate is another stat that can sound impressive in of itself. But when used in concert with other stats and metrics, it can be used to push up players that really don’t need to be in our thoughts when it comes to fantasy football. It’s a nice conversation starter if you want to talk to your mates about how much more work Braxton Berrios should have got in 2020. But those conversations are, I hope, rare.

What can those of us who spent early draft capital on Cam Akers, or that have him on their dynasty teams, do at the moment? Today we look to recent history for guidance to see how teams have fared when losing star RB talent either before or very early in a season and try to apply that to the Rams’ and our fantasy teams’ situations.

If you are considering dealing for Darrell Henderson in trade or haven’t drafted yet, his price will reflect production levels that history suggests he is not likely to reach. And looking beyond the current Rams roster for potential trade candidates is a lottery ticket. Placing one or more of those on our roster means filling our bench with long shots unlikely to put up numbers anywhere close to what we were expecting from a healthy 2021 Akers.