What the hell does all of this mean?
Concentration is critical to superior performance.
– Michael Lauer, investor
First, it’s essential to define what each of these strategies entails. Diversification within the CFF context can be applied at what I’ll call micro and macro levels.
At the micro level, this would mean avoiding taking multiple players, or at least more than one from the same program. At a macro level, this could mean diversifying exposure to the same players across different leagues. The latter applies more to those who are participating in multiple best ball drafts or a lot of regular re-draft leagues.
Stacking is the act of pairing a QB and WR/TE duo from the same program. This is the opposite of diversification and can be thought of as equivalent to a leveraged bet on a single idea.
If the single idea works, it will pay twice; on the other hand, if it doesn’t, you’re now worse off than if you had taken one of the two players. One of the big caveats, though, within the CFF context is that this type of bet offers you the upside of partial winning.
Unlike a traditional betting market where you parlay bets together or an investment that is leveraged (where winning is all or nothing), it’s actually possible to win on half of the idea you had through only one of the two players hitting. For example, the WR you selected may turn out to be just good enough to keep, but not the QB. In that sense, there is even more merit to this strategy within the CFF context.
Now, there’s some grey area here between stacking and double dipping. I define double dipping as doubling up on players from the same program whose successes aren’t directly linked (e.g., two wide receivers, or a wide receiver/TE pairing, or a running back/wide receiver combination).
However, a QB/RB pairing is kind of at the intersection of both stratagems. Technically, the QB’s success shouldn’t really correlate to the RB being productive. The QB scores by passing TDs, his own rushing TDs, and passing it to receivers. Rarely is it the case that the RB in the offense is the primary receiver, but there are some notable exceptions (notably, when Mike Leach was still coaching).
However, on the whole, I’m going to categorize this pairing under the ‘double dipping’ category rather than in the stacking category.
So, when is it appropriate to leverage such strategies? And what are the pros and cons of each? Today, we’re going to go through that very subject.
DIVERSIFICATION
For the purposes of this article, when I refer to diversification, I mean diversifying exposures to players across different leagues. If you don’t participate in multiple CFF leagues, this section may not be of much relevance to you.
This one is probably the most familiar sounding to the audience, given that it is a well-known philosophy in virtually every realm of investing. The idea is simple: don’t put all your eggs in one basket.
This is a straightforward approach and is generally advisable to all CFF players regardless of experience level; however, I will argue that it is much more important for newer/lesser experienced players to leverage this strategy.
Because you may not know what you’re doing when you first get into something (as is usually the case with most endeavors), your judgment is probably not very sound. This is completely OK and inevitable. All the more reason, then, to trust yourself less and cast a wider net when you’re selecting players.
I think diversification is more relevant as a strategy to keep in mind when you’re participating in multiple leagues. Generally speaking, at the micro level, there just aren’t going to be that many opportunities to take more than one, and certainly more than two, players from the same program.
I struggle with this because I often find myself in positions where I can select players I like, but have already acquired several shares elsewhere, or draft someone you like less in the name of ‘diversification’. I usually cave and choose the former.
However, there is an important nuance to consider regarding this topic. I mentioned earlier that diversification is particularly important when you’re new and inexperienced, or simply not confident in your drafting ability (completely fine, as not everyone has hours to spend researching CFB players).
If you’re an experienced CFFer or feel that you are confident in your own abilities, then there are merits to concentrating on your portfolio.
Here is an excerpt from a book that compiled interviews from some of the world’s most successful investors in the 2000s, called The Wisdom of Value, the Folly of Fad, where one such investor, Michael Lauer (a practicing cardiologist), shares his opinion about ‘diversification’ within an investing context:
A lot of that isn’t really tractable in the CFF context, but the notion that it can be beneficial to ‘decouple’ oneself from the market, so long as you’re an experienced ‘player’, is relevant.
Lauer is right in that if you want to separate yourself from the ‘herd,’ so to speak, you have to operate more like a sniper who’s found a handful of great ideas and hammers those. But just as this strategy can help you separate in a positive way, it can also backfire and result in much worse performance if you get it wrong on those handful of ideas.
A new investor is probably not choosing the wisest strategy by putting all of their money into a selection of 10-15 stocks versus the broader strategy of matching the market. Inexperienced CFFers would be wise to keep this paradigm in mind.
On the other hand, when you have access to all of the (public) information, have done a considerable amount of research in the marketplace, and know pretty much everything there is to know about the players being selected, in my mind, the calculus changes.
When you have very specific reasons (obtained through research and available information) to feel optimistic about players x, y, and z… then you’re probably better off separating yourself from the masses and betting on your own ideas, as Mr. Lauer describes above. So, in that sense, the level of diversification that is appropriate for you depends on where you fall along the spectrum of drafters.
Also, it is appropriate to ask what exactly is meant by ‘coupling’ to the market in a CFF context. In investing, this is straightforward: you acquire shares in many different stocks or indices to the point where your portfolio is representative of the overall market or certain segments of the market.
In CFF, your ‘portfolio’ is just the collection of players you’ve drafted. Imagine in a hypothetical scenario where you manage to acquire at least one share of every player rated in the top 30 of his position based on whichever ADP metric you choose to look at.
Then, you’ve essentially captured the entire pool of CFF-relevant players, and there won’t be any particular player who is performing well for your competitors that you don’t have at least one share of in some other league. In that sense, you’ve sufficiently hedged your risk, but on the flip side, your chances of outperforming the average CFF player are also lower.
Think of this in a practical example: you participate in four bestball drafts (maybe four Underdog bestball drafts). In all four leagues, the correlation of players you drafted is zero, meaning you didn’t acquire the same player more than once in any league.
The likelihood that you will have the superior roster in all four leagues is not high. But at the same time, the likelihood that you have the worst roster in all four leagues is also not very high. You may win one and lose three, and it can still be a worthwhile endeavor from a financial standpoint.
On the other hand, the only outcome where you win all four, or at least some collection of the four, likely stems from you identifying the biggest hits and drafting them as much as possible across all leagues. This strategy can backfire, where you end up losing terribly in every league you’re in, but it also doesn’t matter if the league is winner-takes-all, as most bestball drafts are.
If that’s the format you’re playing in, then there is no distinction between finishing dead last versus second in every league, and it might make more sense to leverage up on the same players as much as possible. You’ll either win a lot of leagues or lose a lot of leagues, but at least you won’t finish fifth in all of them.
So, there are merits to both philosophies. Which is more appropriate depends on the drafter and the current player pool. The more conviction you have, the better off you are with a higher concentration strategy. If you feel that there isn’t a lot of separation in the current player pool or that you don’t have enough information to go ‘all in’ on a select few players, then you’re better off with a higher diversification strategy.
STACKING
On that note, let’s get into the second draft strategy being discussed today. This is the one where ‘concentration’ takes on a different dimension from the previous discussion. Now we’re talking about doubling up on the same ideas within the same league that you’re participating in, not across leagues.
This is perhaps the most potent CFF draft strategy there is, and it can be extremely effective when executed properly. The best examples I can think of off the top of my head over the past few seasons include the WKU pairing of Bailey Zappe and Jerreth Sterns (QB1/WR1 in 2021), UW’s pairing of Michael Penix and Rome Odunze in 2022/2023, and Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders and Travis Hunter in 2024.
Coincidentally, all three of those examples are also instances of the third draft strategy being discussed today, which we’ll get into shortly.
In the case of the 2021 WKU team, I don’t think it can get much better than that. Both players finished #1 at their respective positions in CFF. Both players were enormous all year for their managers (until the championship weekend, RIP). That was the one pairing that I felt was on a different level than any of the others I’ve seen. A lot of it was due to the system and the way Zappe and Sterns would link a lot of their production (through short, underneath, easily completed passes).
The latter two examples differed in that the WRs were boundary receivers who would catch passes further downfield and with a lower target volume compared to Sterns. Zappe/Sterns production felt like an inevitability. There wasn’t anything extraordinary happening on the field with these two, but then you’d look up midway through the third quarter and realize both players had 25+ points already.
That example became sort of a guiding light for me in terms of what I want in a perfect world when I’m stacking QB/WRs together. That was a very high-volume air raid offense with a QB who offered little in the rushing department and a shifty slot receiver who was the first read on every play. In my experience, it’s hard to find profiles like this each year.
As is finding pairings where the QB is a weapon in the rushing game and can support an elite CFF WR (e.g., LSU’s Jayden Daniels in 2023).
The more classic examples of QBs who aren’t very mobile, playing in what could be described as an Air Raid or Air Raid Light type of offense, with a big boundary TD merchant like Odunze or Hunter, are more common.
I would say that you almost always want to look for stack opportunities where the QB is non-mobile. There will be the occasional exceptions, but by and large, the hit rate on stacking combos will be higher with ‘statue’ QBs.
What is less discussed is the merits of triple-stacking (QB-WR-WR). Finding successful triplets to pair in CFF is a rare thing, but it can also pay off. In that case, the strategy is sort of a combination of stacking and double dipping (discussed below). In the first three stacking examples, there were two CFF-relevant WRs on each of those teams.
However, adding the triplet mod onto the original stacking strategy doesn’t really increase the potency of the strategy but instead helps monopolize the offense in your favor. You’re still only going to get points for two TDs scored and whatever the yardage/PPR scoring is when the QB throws a pass to one of your WRs. But now the chances that one of your guys is on the end of those passes increase.
DOUBLE DIPPING
Taking multiple players from the same team, whose success isn’t directly linked, is the third strategy we’re talking about today. In the previous section, it was mentioned that the three examples used for stacking QB/WRs could also fall under the category of double dipping since there were two CFF-relevant receivers in each program.
But there are other manifestations of this idea: QB/RB, RB/WR, WR/TE, and RB/TE. The more common examples are QB/RB and WR/WR.
Taking both the QB and RB from a program can be an effective strategy when you’ve identified a very strong offense. In some cases, perhaps in a best-ball league, you may have drafted an RB that you like but who plays with a dual-threat QB. In that case, you may hedge your bet by selecting the QB later. Or, you may select a WR who you’re pretty sure is WR1, but because you think there may even be value in the WR2/WR3 in that offense, also hedge your bets by taking another player (or two) from the same program.
In all of these examples, it only makes sense if you think the offense is going to be really productive. One example in 2025 could be Clemson. You can imagine a scenario where someone not only drafts one WR but also a second and potentially the starting RB in Adam Randall. Or even the TE.
Double dipping is not a strategy designed to increase potency, unlike stacking. You’re not going to get double the points for the same play when you do this strategy—rather, it helps you monopolize production from one program into your pipeline.
In one sense, it helps hedge risk because you’re taking shots on multiple players within the same productive offense (increasing your chances of securing the WR1/go-to playmaker); on the other hand, it is riskier in that you’re concentrating your investment into one offense. ◾
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