You want some of that sweet, sweet variance baked into your best ball rosters.
The natural reflex for many best ball drafters -- whether you're playing on Underdog or DraftKings or elsewhere -- is to create safe rosters. That necessarily means you're not going too heavy on any one NFL offense, even the ones widely considered elite and productive. You might pair a quarterback with one of his primary pass catchers -- or two if you got your eight hours the night before and you're feeling frisky.
But in large-field best ball tournaments named after various breeds of dogs and whatnot, you're going to need an injection of variance if your roster is going to have the juice to make its way to the top of such a crowded room.
We embrace best ball variance with what we might call a mega-stack, or for the zoomers, a giga-stack. Going all in on an offense (or two) is an ideal way to embrace variance in best ball formats. Combining a quarterback with a trio of his pass catchers -- including, maybe, his running back -- means your team will reap all the fantasy points that come along with a fantastic season from said offense. The downside inherent in a high-variance approach means a lousy season from this QB and his main guys sinks your team into best ball oblivion. That's the deal you're making when you embrace variance though. My team will be really good or really bad; probably there won't be an in-between. And that's OK.
You're making a bet that if your quarterback vastly overperforms his 2025 fantasy prospects, several of his pass catchers will come along for the stat-heavy ride. You want the full benefits of this unexpected statistical outburst that likely was not baked into these players' ADPs.
Here are three somewhat under-the-radar mega-stacks that best ball drafters can secure without much effort right now. These are what you might call easy stacks; they include players that can be had by anyone, though some might require an ADP reach (for an example of a somewhat difficult stack, consider the Vikings, a stack that does not work if you can't get Justin Jefferson in the few few picks of the first round).
This comes with the caveat that things change: Coaches talk, players get banged up, beat writers notice things. And ADPs react accordingly.
2025 Fantasy Football Mock Draft: An early look coming out of the NFL draft
This is a best ball stack I'm targeting pretty heavily because the secret is all the way out on Harvey -- the next Jamaal Charles, some are saying -- and he becomes a second round pick in best ball leagues.
The Broncos in Nix's rookie season were far more pass heavy than I thought they'd be (I acknowledge that Sean Payton might've been forced to lean on the pass with one of the league's worst running backs rooms). Only six teams in 2024 had a higher pass rate over expected than Denver, who ranked 13th in early-down pass rate. It wasn't all that magnificent, as the Broncos ranked 15th in net adjusted yards per pass attempt, in line with the Steelers and Cardinals. Nix enters his second season in a decidedly positive offensive environment. Pro Football Focus graded the Broncos offensive line last year as the league's best pass-blocking unit, which allowed a 3.7 percent sack rate, the second lowest in the NFL.
Obviously you're not going to draft all of the six Broncos listed above. Nix is a must, of course, along with Sutton and perhaps Engram and his consistent target-commanding ways. Harvey is something close to a must-have in a legit Denver stack since Payton's offense in 2024 targeted the running back position at a 21 percent clip, the fourth highest rate in the NFL. Only the Dolphins, Steelers, and Saints targeted running backs more frequently. This, as you may know, is a longtime staple of Payton offenses and is exceedingly unlikely to change after the team took Harvey in the second round of the 2025 NFL Draft.
Payton said in early May that he doesn't know "how often the running back is built into the passing game" of a college offense (Harvey had just 61 grabs over three seasons at UCF) adding that the Broncos have installed "two or three schemes" that would get Harvey more involved in the passing game.
One reason to take up to three -- possibly four -- Denver pass catchers alongside Nix is the lack of a dominant WR1 in the Broncos offense. Sutton last season led the team with a respectable 25 percent target share (and a 42 percent air yards share) and the Broncos had the fourth lowest rate of first read targets. The ball isn't forced to anyone in this offense.
Mims is the painfully obvious better-in-best-ball option here. He had just five fantasy relevant games last year, and when Mims hits, he hits. Banking on a handful of big fantasy performances seems like a safe bet for Mims, whose ADP remains reasonable.
That the Broncos targeted the tight end position at a 13 percent rate in 2024 shouldn't scare you off Engram. Tight ends simply weren't part of the Denver offense last season because, well, they weren't good. Engram is a target and reception vacuum: Only four tight ends have seen more targets than Engram since the start of the 2023 season.
The Happy Hour crew analyzes the fantasy impact of some of the final skill players selected in Round 2 of the 2025 NFL Draft, including WR Tre Harris, WR Jack Bech and RB RJ Harvey.
QB Geno Smith
TE Brock Bowers
WR Jakobi Meyers
WR Jack Bech
RB Ashton Jeanty
This stacking play is on the cute side since it's in part predicated on the Raiders being balanced or pass-first in 2024 as run-centric Chip Kelly takes over the team's offense in service of the run-centric Pete Carroll.
Probably that's why the Riaders are so easy to stack. The whole best ball world sees Vegas as a massively run-heavy team centered around first-round pick Ashton Jeanty as the first, second, and fifth option for matriculating the ball downfield. And if they're right -- if the Raiders use Geno Smith strictly as a facilitator -- then this stacking strategy likely won't work. So it goes.
It starts at the top with Bowers. You're probably going to have to choose between Bowers and Jeanty, though getting both guys would go a long way to securing any kind of fantasy juice Geno can squeeze out of the Vegas system in 2025. Bowers proved a monster in his 2024 rookie season. He drew a target on 25 percent of his routes and finished as the TE1 overall despite scoring a mere five touchdowns in a dysfunctional Vegas offense. If Geno has a great year, there's (almost) no chance Bowers doesn't go off in his sophomore season.
Geno appears to be set for something of a bump in positive touchdowns regression this year. His touchdown rate, after peaking at 5.4 percent in 2022, dropped to 4 percent in 2023 and then a miserable 3.6 percent in 2024. He was fourth in both catchable ball rate and on-target rate last season. Geno's red zone misery reached shocking levels in his final season with the Seahawks, however. He completed just seven of his 26 pass attempts inside the ten yard line, and only 52 percent of his inside-the-20 throws -- among the lowest marks in the NFL.
Hopefully, if that accuracy carries over to the Raiders, Geno's TD luck can change. That's the theory anyway.
Jakobi Meyers is an essential addition to this Vegas stack, as you probably guessed. Meyers in 2024 was 12th in wide receivers catches and 17th in wideout yardage while seeing targets from two quarterbacks that probably aren't among the league's 40 best signal callers. Gardner Minshew, for his part, was among the bottom-10 QBs in on-target percentage last season. The marked upgrade to Geno Smith should make Meyers -- certainly not a thrilling best ball selection -- a consistent and important part of the Raiders' rejuvenated passing attack.
Throwing Bech, the team's second round draft pick in 2025, into a Geno stack makes more than a little sense since the rookie is reportedly on his way to getting starter's snaps. If the point guard-like Geno is going to overperform in 2025, Bech is going to have best ball-relevant weeks if he is running consistent routes in the Raiders offense.
Kyle Dvorchak digs deeper into Brian Callahan and the Titans' plans for quarterbacks Cam Ward and Will Levis, explaining why the 2025 No. 1 overall pick will be the no-doubt Week 1 starter with immediate fantasy upside.
QB Cam Ward
RB Tyjae Spears/Tony Pollard
WR Calvin Ridley
WR Elic Ayomanor
TE Chig Okonkwo
Try not to dry heave. The Titans may be a galaxy brain stack, but I'm convinced they have upside in their range of outcomes with Ward under center and a defense that likely won't be able to stop anyone in 2025.
Ward is not going to be the check-down machine head coach Brian Callahan seems to desire. As he did at Miami, Ward is going to scramble and make plays and be unafraid to force the ball downfield, into coverage. This will naturally lead to some turnovers. It'll also lead to big, fantasy-boosting plays for Ward and his pass catchers. Ward in his final collegiate season was second in the nation in Pro Football Focus' big time throws. He wasn't half bad on deep shots either: Ward in 2024 ranked fifth in passing yards on downfield attempts and ninth in downfield accuracy.
It's a nice profile for a wideout like Ridley, who last season led the NFL in air yards by a comfortable margin and took in a whopping 45 percent of the Titans' air yards. He was also top-20 in ESPN's open score, a metric that measures a pass catcher's separation from defenders. That didn't mean a whole lot for fantasy purposes, but don't let that stop you from taking Ridley in the fifth or sixth round of best ball drafts. Ward is the kind of upgrade that could make Ridley's receiving profile sing.
Rookie Elic Ayomanor is another better-in-best-ball option who could benefit from Ward's downfield acumen. Ayomanor had a hefty 14.3 average depth of target in college and is considered a solid contested catch specialist who uses his body well on deep shots into coverage. Callahan and other Tennessee coaches spoke highly of Ayomanor during the team's rookie minicamp. He could immediately take on starter's snaps over Treylon Burks. Adding Ayomanor and Ridley to a Ward stack would give you a good chance of benefiting from much of Ward's downfield production in 2025.
Okonkwo last season was useless for fantasy purposes while Will Levis was under center for Tennessee. With Mason Rudolph. From Week 14-17 -- a tiny sample, I know -- Okonko was third in tight end receptions and fifth in tight end targets. With Rudolph dropping back, Okonkwo saw a target on 27 percent of his pass routes as the Titans' primary check-down option. That's a noteworthy rate, to put it as mildly as possible. Over his three-year NFL career, Okonkwo has commanded a target on a solid-if-unspectacular 20 percent of his routes.
A solid route participation rate in 2025 should make Okonkwo a key part of a Ward-centric stack.