The Carolina Panthers could be a top D/ST in Week 16 and are owned in under 50% of leagues

Dylan Lerch has been writing his Defense Wins Championships column for three straight seasons, and each installment can be found at Empeopled.com every Tuesday morning. You can follow him @dtlerch.

It’s championship time. Anybody with Baltimore last week knows how a league-leading D/ST score can change a matchup. Their 23 points led all scorers.

Overall, the top 10 plays from last week turned out fairly profitable. Seattle (ranked 1st) scored 11. Baltimore (2nd) scored 23. Kansas City (3rd) scored 17. Carolina (4th) scored 12. Detroit (5th) scored 10. The St. Louis Rams (ranked 6th) were the most disappointing of the top choices, landing just 6 points, although they did hold the Cardinals to just 4 field goals and zero touchdowns. Deeper into the rankings, NYG (9 points), New England (18 points), and Indianapolis (10 points) all scored well, meaning that 8 of the top 10 choices scored 9 or more and only 1 scored below average. However, it was a very high scoring week all around, with 6 D/ST TDs across the league.

Buffalo, New Orleans, Cincinnati, and Houston all vastly outperformed expectation. I suspect that the Bengals were the only one of the 4 that could have been justifiable starts, and suggests that we should have vastly tempered expectations from the Cleveland QB.

But that’s enough about Week 15. If you’re reading this, you likely only care about one thing:

Week 16 D/ST Scoring (ESPN Standard)

*The projections lean heavily on the work of Vegas oddsmakers to get a realistic idea of a raw scoring expectation for each team. Then, the normal D/ST components (sacks, turnovers, and D/ST touchdowns) are projected based on matchup and combined with Vegas to come up with a final number. The projection represents an “Expected Value,” or the weighted sum of all outcomes across the scoring range.

1. Seattle Seahawks D/ST, 11.4 points at Arizona
2. Buffalo Bills D/ST, 10.8 at Oakland
3. Carolina Panthers D/ST, 9.6 vs Cleveland
4. New England Patriots D/ST, 9.6 at NY Jets
5. Miami Dolphins D/ST, 9.3 vs Minnesota
6. Philadelphia Eagles D/ST, 9.1 at Washington
7. Baltimore Ravens D/ST, 9.0 at Houston
8. Green Bay Packers D/ST, 8.9 at Tampa Bay
9. Jacksonville Jaguars D/ST, 8.8 vs Tennessee
10. St. Louis Rams D/ST, 8.1 vs NY Giants
11. San Francisco 49ers D/ST, 7.0 vs San Diego
12. Detroit Lions D/ST, 6.9 at Chicago
13. Cleveland Browns D/ST, 6.9 at Carolina
14. Denver Broncos D/ST, 5.8 at Cincinnati
15. Tennessee Titans D/ST, 5.6 at Jacksonville
16. New York Giants D/ST, 5.2 at St. Louis
17. Arizona Cardinals D/ST, 5.0 vs Seattle
18. San Diego Chargers D/ST, 5.0 at San Francisco
19. Houston Texans D/ST, 4.9 vs Baltimore
20. Pittsburgh Steelers D/ST, 4.7 vs Kansas City
21. Oakland Raiders D/ST, 4.0 vs Buffalo
22. Chicago Bears D/ST, 3.8 vs Detroit
23. Minnesota Vikings D/ST, 3.2 at Miami
24. New Orleans Saints D/ST, 3.1 vs Atlanta
25. Kansas City Chiefs D/ST, 2.9 at Pittsburgh
26. Dallas Cowboys D/ST, 2.2 vs Indianapolis
27. Cincinnati Bengals D/ST, 1.5 vs Denver
28. Indianapolis Colts D/ST, 0.9 at Dallas
29. Tampa Bay Buccaneers D/ST, -1.3 vs Green Bay
30. Washington Redskins D/ST, -1.4 vs Philadelphia
31. New York Jets D/ST, -1.9 vs New England
32. Atlanta Falcons D/ST, -2.7 at New Orleans

Astute readers will notice something right off the bat: road teams everywhere! 6 of the top 8 D/STs are on the road, and 1 of the top 10 teams is Jacksonville. Let’s see if we can make some sense of it all!

Tier 1: Seattle and Buffalo

The last time the Seattle Seahawks played a game against Ryan Lindley, it was absolutely brutal. In 2012, Lindley pitched in with John Skelton to concede 39 D/ST points on 8 (!) turnovers to the Seahawks, en route to a 58-0 loss. It would be unfair to expect anything even remotely close to that finish, but Seahawks D/ST owners should be sitting pretty this week in their championships. To start with, Vegas has the Cardinals pegged for the most inept offense on the board this weekend, behind even Oakland, Cleveland, and Houston. Also, the Seahawks have been playing much better as of late. After a slow start, they’ve climbed to the second or third tier of D/ST scoring year to date, and have scored 11+ in 6 of 8 games. The Cardinals for their part have not been very generous to D/STs, but with some combination of Lindley and Logan Thomas under center, the Seahawks should be fine.

The Buffalo Bills, meanwhile, have been one of the most game-changing fantasy units in the format – not because they’ve been started, but because they’ve held Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers to horrible games in consecutive weeks! Now that they finally have a good matchup against a very inept offense, the Bills become an elite start. Buffalo is already the #1 scoring D/ST on the season by a fairly wide margin. Plus, the Raiders have been a profitable fade in at least 8 of 15 weeks and have only burned opposing D/STs three times. All signs point to Buffalo being a very safe, very high upside play against a very bad Raiders team.

I would start the Seahawks over the Bills across the board (expect perhaps in DFS, but tier two options – most notably Carolina at their salary discount – provide the best value overall).

Tier 2: Carolina, New England, Miami

Clearly, neither Cleveland QB is very good right now. Manziel will get the start on Sunday, but he was horrible both to the eye test and on the box score that I wouldn’t be very concerned as a Panthers D/ST owner. They’ve gotten two solid starts in a row and have been an enticing boom/bust play at times for their good matchups all season long. The Browns barely broke 100 total yards last weekend against the Bengals (107, to be precise), and though we can’t expect that much futility in Week 16, we can expect something pretty bad from them once again.

The other two choices in this tier, New England and Miami, have been popular stashes for many weeks now. Miami appears to be the riskier pick on the surface, but going deeper, looks quite enticing. When giving up 4 or more sacks, the Vikings have conceded an average of 18.4 (!) points in 5 (!) games. When giving up 3 or fewer, the Vikings have conceded just 2 D/ST points per game. Can Miami get to 4 sacks? I would not bet on it, but I have them expecting ~2.8, which does give them pretty decent odds for a filthy high score.

New England’s scoring profile is quite similar to Miami’s, in large part due to the Patriots being on the road and the Dolphins playing at home. The Patriots can expect a small edge in sacks, small edge in turnovers, and a slightly higher game score allowed.

When navigating this tier, I would choose Carolina if you want to play for upside, Miami if you want to play it safe, and New England if you want a healthy combination of both.

Tier 3: Philadelphia, Baltimore, Green Bay, Jacksonville

This is where it starts getting tricky. Philadelphia and Baltimore stand out as being the best choices right off the bat, due to both having incredible upside. The Eagles quality special teams have led to a consistent underestimation here in the rankings, and I suspect they’ve been lucky in their scoring on top of that. However, against a Washington Redskins team that has been one of the most generous in the league and that has been giving up 5+ sacks in each of their last 6 games, they make a very powerful play. The only downside is the usual Eagles downside, which is that their offense plays so fast that it can sometimes be a liability for the D/ST. The upside is that more defensive snaps also means more opportunities for counting stats such as sacks, turnovers, and D/ST TDs.

Baltimore is perhaps the most intriguing play of the entire league! They’re on the road, but like Seattle, they get to face a very subpar QB in either Thad Lewis or Case Keenum. It’s a Gary Kubiak revenge game if you believe in those things (I don’t particularly, but it’s a cute story). The Ravens are coming off of two strong showings in a row and their pass rush in particular has stepped up its game. The Texans offensive line has been performing well in pass protection, but that smokescreen can only last for so long before they come back to reality; I still don’t think they’re very good.

Whereas Baltimore and Philadelphia are both desirable plays if you’re looking for upside in particular, I would say that the Ravens are the slightly safer play with unknown upside and the Eagles are the riskier play with very obvious upside.

Green Bay rates well, but I would stay away unless you’re forced to count on them (I’m in a 12-team league with only 9 D/STs available – the other 11 owners have 22 D/STs between them!). For one, they’ve been pretty bad lately, with 30% of their YTD scoring coming from D/ST TDs and only cracking 4+ sacks twice all year.

Which means, yes, I would start the Jaguars over the Packers and I would feel comfortable trusting them in my championship game as needed. The Jaguars are favored for the first time in recent memory, even at home, and can expect almost 3 sacks against the hapless Titans. The Jaguars have had one of the better pass rushes in the league, surprisingly enough, notching more sacks thus far than Seattle, Carolina, Miami, New England, Green Bay, St. Louis, San Francisco, and Detroit. Not bad! Blake Bortles’ turnovers and the Jaguars inept offense provides a huge liability for their D/ST, but the pieces are in place to score well often enough.

My top 12 start order (assuming neutral/slight risk aversion) would be:

1. Seattle
2. Buffalo
3. New England
4. Miami
5. Carolina
6. Baltimore
7. Philadelphia
8. Jacksonville
9. Green Bay
10. St. Louis
11. Detroit
12. San Francisco

If you’re going any deeper than that, you probably should have planned ahead better. Deeper options if you’re really stuck are Tennessee, San Diego, and Pittsburgh.

Best of luck to everybody in their Week 16 matches!