Pretty much every fantasy analyst out there advises you to draft a defense at the end of your draft and stream throughout the year. Usually the top defenses from the previous year don’t repeat their success, and you’re stuck with a middling defense that you spent a ninth round pick on.
But what makes a great streaming defense? Is the home team always the best option? How about the game with the lowest over/under (O/U)? Or in the case of the 49ers last year, is the best defensive option the team with the best-looking QB?
This article will help set up my tiered system of team defense options for your fantasy football lineup. I’ll explain what data I looked at, what conclusions I came to, and put every NFL team into one of my five fool-proof tiers that are absolutely correct no matter what. Let’s dig in!
The Process
(No, this didn’t turn into a Joel Embiid article.)
I decided today that I wanted to find what correlates with high scoring team defenses. So using fantasydata.com, I pulled the last two years of team defensive performances (around 960 total instances). Then using aussportsbetting.com’s wonderful data, I threw in spreads and O/U totals.
Once all the data was compiled, I started looking for correlations and combinations of data that led to the highest scoring weeks by a team defense. While the data did provide conclusive results, it’s not all that surprising.
In my incredibly advanced table above you’ll see where our sweet spot lies. On the left you’ll see O/U totals for the matchup. At the top you’ll see the split between favorites and underdogs. On average the projected favorite on the week WILL outscore an underdog. As I said, nothing groundbreaking there.
What really surprised me was that spike you see in the 40-43.5 O/U section. Granted these are arbitrary cutoffs, but the data speaks for itself! A favorite in a relatively low scoring game will be your best fantasy option.
But Jake, why not just shoot for the lowest O/U? As you’ll see that is a decent option. Even the underdog scores reasonably well in extremely low scoring games. However your upside is capped by choosing the lowest of totals due to it likely being a really bad game.
Usually totals will get lower than 40 when BOTH teams are pretty bad. While these are still fine options to stream, you won’t get quite the upside you would in the next group of scores.
Week 1 D/ST Streaming Tiers
So as I mentioned at the top, this is the part where we put our data to the test. Since data never lies, these tiers are impenetrable and should be taken as fact.
Tier one will be all favorites in the 40-43.5 O/U range. Next up will be tier two which will consist of double-digit favorites. There aren’t many of these, but they’re a much better bet than a single-digit favorite. Tier three will consist of the remaining favorites. Tier four will be underdogs with a very low O/U. If you get down to tier five, you’d probably be better off not starting a defense.
Note: I’m including all NFL teams in tiers, as team defense waiver wires are like the wild west. They’re really unpredictable due to teams constantly dropping defenses.
Tier 1 (No Doubters)
- New England
- Philadelphia
- Detroit
- LA Chargers
- Tennessee
Tier 2 (Double Digit Favorites)
- N/A
Tier 3 (Remaining Favorites)
- Kansas City
- Baltimore
- Buffalo
- Las Vegas
- Seattle
- Indianapolis
- Minnesota
- San Francisco
- New Orleans
- Dallas
- Pittsburgh
Tier 4 (Pickins are getting slim)
- NY Jets
Tier 5 (Seriously, consider not starting one)
- Houston
- Miami
- Cleveland
- Carolina
- Atlanta
- Washington
- Chicago
- Jacksonville
- Green Bay
- Cincinnati
- Arizona
- Tampa Bay
- LA Rams
- NY Giants
- Denver
