How to stack a quarterback with pass catchers

A classic NFL stack is a quarterback and at least one of his pass catchers. If the quarterback throws a touchdown, the receiver or tight end scores too. The correlation is the point. The optimizer does not guess a narrative for you. It enforces the shape you ask for, then fills the rest of the roster by projection.

What the control does

On DraftKings Classic and FanDuel Classic you can require a stack of one or two pass catchers. Pass catchers are wide receivers and tight ends, not running backs. The solver picks the team. It has to be a team that still has a quarterback and enough pass catchers in the pool after your locks and excludes.

• One pass catcher is the lighter build. It leaves more room for salary.
• Two pass catchers is a heavier stack. It fails closed if no team has a quarterback and two receivers or tight ends left.
• Bring-back adds one wide receiver or tight end from the quarterback's opponent.

Bring-back

A bring-back is there for the other side of a shootout. If the quarterback you stacked is chasing points, someone on the opponent is usually involved. The rule looks only at opposing wide receivers and tight ends. It will not spend the bring-back on a running back.

Uniqueness and exposure

The first lineup is the projection-maximizing roster that satisfies the rules. Each later lineup has to change by at least the minimum-uniqueness number of players versus every lineup already built. Max exposure is a hard cap: floor(lineups times percent). At 50% of 10 lineups, a player can appear 5 times. At 100%, the cap is off. At 40% of 3 lineups, the floor is 1.

Lineups are built one at a time. That is fast in the browser and easy to explain. It is not a single model that optimizes all 20 lineups at once. If locks, a tight stack, and a high uniqueness number cannot be satisfied together, the tool returns the lineups it already found and says why it stopped.

What this does not cover

Showdown and single-game contests do not use this classic stack control. Those lineups are one captain or MVP and five flex players. Kickers and team defense are eligible there. Both DraftKings Showdown and FanDuel single-game lineups have to use players from both teams. A bring-back on classic slates stays a wide receiver or tight end. FanDuel's MVP salary multiplier defaults to 1.5x and can be changed in the contest config if a slate says otherwise. Max exposure keeps the floor rounding described above.