The Eagles D/ST could provide streamers another strong performance in Week 4
Dylan Lerch is one of the pioneers of combining Las Vegas with fantasy football, and he has been writing his Defense Wins Championships column for four straight seasons. Each installment can be found at Empeopled.com every Tuesday morning. You can follow him on Twitter @dtlerch.
Let’s go back to basics for a moment. What exactly is “game script,” and how can we forecast it? Why would we even care?
The best way to predict fantasy scoring is by first predicting how the game will flow. For example, if you could be sure that your RB’s team would be looking at a 10-point victory in a high-scoring game, you’d be excited to start him regardless of how the matchup is for opposing rushers. It suggests a lot of opportunities for touchdowns, yardage, and perhaps a chance to kill the clock late in the game. Likewise, if you were looking at a very good receiver, you want to find a situation where his team would be throwing a high volume of passes in a high-scoring game. More passes equals more targets equals more fantasy points!
Seems obvious, right? It should be, since this is the very foundation of choosing fantasy starters. How to calculate these expectations is pretty simple too, but it just takes knowing where to look; Las Vegas. Since one of our core theorems in Defense Wins Championships is that Vegas publishes accurate lines, we can determine both the aggregate game script and aggregate scoring expectations for each team. The lines don’t say who will win each game, but they do suggest who should win the game and by how much if you could generate a large enough sample size.
Let’s put it into practice. The Jets and Dolphins are playing this weekend in London. Normally, we’d be at a total loss for this game. Miami is in a downward spiral of sadness, the Jets are playing out of their minds, and it’s a neutral field. But if we take our cues from Vegas, we can start to make some sense of it. The Jets are favored by 2.5, and the game over/under is 41. Simply figure out how many points that leaves for each team, and we get NY Jets 22, Miami Dolphins 19 (or a game with a similar score). Vegas thinks the Jets will win ~55% of the time in what should be a low-scoring game. Assuming the Jets D/ST can expect a reasonable number of turnovers (hint: they can), they should be a playable D/ST this weekend. But are they good enough? And who else should we start in Week 4?
First, let’s take a look at last week’s results.
The top scoring D/STs in Week 3 were Arizona (28 points), Philadelphia (19), Buffalo (18), Seattle (18), and Minnesota (18). All five of these were ranked, with three in the top 10, although the entire top 10 had some big swings and misses. Top choice New England throttled the Jaguars, but garbage time and a massive lead dropped them down to 8 points. In the rest of tier 1/1.5: Seattle took care of business, Houston kept the score low but couldn’t capitalize for D/ST points (6), and Carolina finished with a respectable-but-disappointing 9 points.
Averages by tier
1 & 1.5: 10.25
2 & 2.5: 13.75
3 & 3.5: 10.5
The average D/ST score for the week was 8.5.
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Week 4 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier)
- Carolina Panthers – 13.0 – 1 (high floor)
- Indianapolis Colts – 12.2 – 1
- Philadelphia Eagles – 12.2 – 1 (high variance)
- Denver Broncos – 11.9 – 1.5 (high floor)
- Seattle Seahawks – 11.7 – 1.5 (high floor)
- Arizona Cardinals – 11.5 – 1.5
- San Diego Chargers – 11.1 – 2
- Buffalo Bills – 10.8 – 2
- Green Bay Packers – 10.8 – 2 (high floor)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers – 10.4 – 2.5 (high variance)
- Cincinnati Bengals – 10.1 – 3 (high floor)
- Atlanta Falcons – 10.0 – 3 (high variance)
- Baltimore Ravens – 9.9 – 3
- New York Jets – 9.8 – 3
- Oakland Raiders – 9.5 – 3.5
- Cleveland Browns – 9.3 – 3.5 (high variance)
It’s a pretty clean break from there to #17 and the New York Giants with just 8.8. Note that the New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans are on bye this week. Neither team is worth keeping through their bye week, so you can safely drop both.
Teams marked with (high variance) are ones that have a more variable scoring range. While every team can score very high or low, these teams in particular are more boom/bust. Teams marked with (high floor) are those that can still score low, but that are relatively unlikely to score a total dud.
Tier 1: Carolina, Indianapolis, Philadelphia
All three of these teams have excellent matchups. Indianapolis is the only home team, but they’re also the weakest of the three defenses. Otherwise, there are very few concerns in each of these games.
The Panthers get Jameis Winston and the Bucs (conceding the 12th best score to opposing D/STs through three games, with two of their three opponents having bad defenses). Meanwhile, the Panthers – undrafted or available in many leagues during the preseason – are quietly sitting at fifth on the year in D/ST points.
The Colts are pretty mediocre, but this is strictly fading the Jaguars. I don’t care that they were good in Week 2, I care that they’re the Jaguars.
The Eagles meanwhile get the Redskins, who haven’t looked horrible. However, for them to be anything scary, they’d have to be so far from their baseline offense from 2014. The Eagles are strong enough – and Kirk Cousins generous enough – that they should be able to capitalize even if this game is in Washington.
The Panthers are on bye next week, whereas the Colts and Eagles both have decent matchups. However, the Eagles are a better D/ST than the Colts. Normally I’d break the tie with Indy being at home, but in this case I think you can safely go either way here and feel good about it.
Tier 1.5: Denver, Seattle, Arizona
These three teams pass the eye test better than anyone else on the board. Denver looks downright filthy, Seattle has been filthy for years now, and Arizona just relegated the 49ers to the Pac 12 with their beatdown. All three of them are at home, they’re favored big, and they’re all subject to over/unders of 43 or lower. These are all exceptional plays, and I would likely recommend that nobody drop anything in Tier 1.5 for the streamers in Tier 1 this week. I find it a little odd that they did not each rate higher than the teams above, but then again, defensive points allowed is one of the least important of our indicators for a good play – turnovers and sacks are much more important.
None of these teams are likely to be on your waiver wire.
Tier 2 & 2.5: San Diego, Buffalo, Green Bay, Tampa Bay
Yuck, yuck, yuck, and Buffalo. I’ll take it. The Bills keep chugging along and proving me wrong. I’ve said all offseason that they look like the best D/ST in the game, but that their early schedule and hefty price tag would lead me to pass on them in the draft. However, they’ve been the 9th ranked D/ST through three weeks, and put up excellent scores of 12 and 18 in Weeks 1 and 3. If you’ve got them, you’re still probably starting the Bills over everything else, unless you feel really confidant about one of the Tier 1.5 teams and they’re somehow still available.
Otherwise, this tier reeks.
DEAD DOVE
Do Not Eat!
One of the others will probably score well, but good luck choosing between the Packers, Chargers, and Buccaneers. That’s the order I’d start them in if I were streaming. The 49ers just gave up 28 points to the Arizona D/ST and I don’t think that it was an accident. Higher than expected, of course, but that 49ers offense is very exploitable, and the Packers pass rush was looking mighty fine once they took an early lead last night.
Tier 3 & 3.5: Cincinnati, Atlanta, Baltimore, NY Jets, Oakland, Cleveland
Sign of the times; the Oakland Raiders are three-point road favorites against Chicago. The Bears want that No. 1 pick in the draft and they’re not being the least bit shy about it. They’re horrible, the Raiders look pretty good, although I still wouldn’t be thrilled with starting them. They’re a last resort in super deep leagues though, and we should be lucky to have them. Remember, it could always be worse, you could be stuck with the cursed Dolphins!
The Jets seem lower than they should be, but a lot of that is from home field advantage (or lack thereof). They’d probably be a strong play at home, a weak play on the road, and are instead something in between. They’re a good enough D/ST (along with Cincinnati) that I’d be looking to stay put among this tier if I had either of those. However, the Bengals are @ Seattle next week and the Jets are on bye. I wouldn’t necessarily be worried about dropping either one as needed.
I hope your defenses have been kind to you.
If not… do better?
If only it were that easy.
