Best Ball Stacking Shootouts: How to Target High-Total Games for Spike Weeks
Why projected shootouts are spike-week factories: not all games are created equal for fantasy. A game with a high projected total — where both offenses are expected to score a lot — produces far more fantasy points to go around than a low-scoring slog. In best ball, where spike weeks win tournaments and correlation amplifies your ceiling, concentrating players from projected shootouts is a powerful way to chase upside. When a high-total game delivers, multiple players from both sides post big weeks, and if you own several of them, your roster spikes. Stacking shootouts extends the logic of stacking beyond a single offense to the whole game environment, capturing the correlated scoring of a back-and-forth, high-total affair. Understanding how to identify and target the games most likely to shoot out is a way to tilt your roster toward the highest-scoring environments.
Stacking Shootouts
Why shootouts matter:
The logic: (1) high-total games produce more points — a game both offenses are expected to score in generates far more fantasy production than a low-scoring one, so the players in it have higher ceilings (the implied team total signal); (2) shootouts amplify spike weeks — when a high-total game delivers, multiple players from both sides explode, which is exactly the spike-week scoring best ball rewards; (3) the correlation spans both teams — a back-and-forth shootout lifts players on both sides (each team passing to keep up), so a game stack captures more correlated upside than a one-team stack; (4) it extends stacking to the game level, since stacking a shootout is stacking the whole high-scoring environment, not just one offense (the broader stacking and offense-first principles).
How to identify shootouts and stack them:
The approach: (1) target high game totals — the projected total points for a game (from the betting market) is the clearest signal of a likely shootout, so concentrate on the highest-total games; (2) favor games between strong offenses or weak defenses — matchups pairing high-powered offenses (or exploitable defenses) are the most likely to shoot out, so weight the offensive and defensive quality on both sides; (3) stack across both teams — drafting players from both sides of a projected shootout (a receiver here, a quarterback and pass-catcher there) captures the correlated scoring of the back-and-forth; (4) combine with offense quality, since a shootout stack works best when the players you take from the game are genuinely productive in their offenses, blending the game environment with player value.
How to balance it against value:
Keeping discipline: (1) value still comes first — do not reach badly for players just to stack a shootout, since the lost value can exceed the correlation gain, so take shootout players at reasonable value; (2) draft-time totals are projections — game environments shift between draft and gameday (injuries, weather), so a draft-time shootout read is a tilt, not a certainty, especially in early-offseason drafts; (3) do not over-concentrate in one game — tying too much of your roster to a single projected shootout raises both your ceiling and your fragility if it disappoints, so spread across a few; (4) use shootout stacking as one upside tool, since it is one way to chase ceiling alongside offense stacking and spike-week profiles, integrated into the overall plan of the best ball draft strategy hub.
For the foundational strategy, see our stacking hub and drafting offenses guide. Start at the best ball hub for all resources.