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.
The first few weeks of the NFL season are always filled with surprise stories. Over the course of the offseason, we see teams change shape via free agency and the draft. We see coaches come and go. We see reliable old veterans retire, and former second- and third-stringers elevate their game to become starters. By necessity, we rely on last year’s performances to dictate our expectations for the current season. However, by this time every year, we usually have a pretty good idea of where things are headed.
Of course, not every story has been written in ink, and some have yet to be written at all. But for the most part going forward, Arizona’s former head coach Dennis Green said it best: “They are what we thought they were.” We’re mostly done with the surprises. We’re mostly done with the Cinderella stories. We’re mostly done with getting the questions wrong, rather than just getting the answers wrong.
Mostly.
For now though, it feels good to get something right. Week 5 D/STs were very good across the board, but especially the ones which we were targeting. The top two D/STs on the week, Green Bay (21 points) and Denver (20) were both in our Tier 1, and both games went largely as expected. The other Tier 1 and 1.5 options, Tampa Bay and New England, produced at a high level as well, and finished with 13 and 14 points, respectively. Deeper options scored well too, with 10+ point scorers Tennessee, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Arizona all being pegged in last week’s column. Defensive TDs helped the cause in some of these cases, but they largely all went as expected otherwise, and didn’t require the TDs to be start-worthy.
Even Pittsburgh in Tier 3.5, which looked pretty sketchy on paper, scored 16 points. Normally, we’d write this off as a mediocre play that just hit big, but when a MNF team is available to streamers, it’s extra important. Anybody who has a D/ST that they don’t want to drop for their bye week can always run the “MNF Gambit” – wait until Sunday night, assess your week’s matchup, and then decide whether to drop your D/ST for a MNF option if you need the extra juice. Note that this can backfire tremendously, but it can also be quite satisfying if/when it works! The Steelers D/ST played well enough in their San Diego vacation home, and the play was capped off by the slowest pick-six I’ve ever witnessed.
It wasn’t all butterflies and roses, though. Houston – ranked poorly by the algorithm, but looking stronger by midweek – came through with an absolutely embarrassing performance on Thursday night. The New York Giants, Baltimore Ravens, and Jacksonville Jaguars all had more pluses than minuses going into Sunday, but left owners feeling angry and let down. These four D/STs combined for just 4 points between them.
Averages by tier
1 & 1.5: 17
2 & 2.5: 9.1
3 & 3.5: 11
The average D/ST score for Week 5 was 9.0 points.
As usual, successes and failures aren’t anywhere near as important as the process, so we plod ever onward into the depths of Week 6.
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Week 6 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier)
- Denver Broncos – 16.3 – 1 (high floor)
- Arizona Cardinals – 14.0 – 1
- New York Jets – 13.6 – 1
- Green Bay Packers – 12.2 – 1.5 (high floor)
- Tennessee Titans – 11.8 – 2 (high floor)
- Detroit Lions – 10.5 – 2
- New England Patriots – 10.2 – 2 (high variance)
- Cincinnati Bengals – 10.2 – 2 (high floor)
- Carolina Panthers – 10.0 – 2
- Seattle Seahawks – 10.0 – 2
- Philadelphia Eagles – 9.4 – 2.5 (high variance)
- Minnesota Vikings – 9.3 – 2.5 (high floor)
- Atlanta Falcons – 9.0 – 2.5 (high variance)
- Baltimore Ravens – 7.6 – 3
- Buffalo Bills – 7.4 – 3 (high variance)
- Washington Redskins – 7.4 – 3 (high variance)
On bye this week are St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Oakland, and Dallas. All are safely droppable in most/all formats. With the Rams playing the Browns at home in week 7, consider the MNF gambit (targeting Philadelphia in particular) if you have them and are not risk averse, but don’t stress too much either way.
Tier 1: Denver, Arizona, NY Jets
Denver has been so good.
- Lots of sacks and turnovers
- Not allowing many yards
- Everyone is starting them
- Tier-1 defense rest of year
- Nationwide is on your side
The Cardinals are a little trickier to assess. On one hand, they’ve been really good to date, but we don’t care much about that hand. We care more about why they’ve been good. In this case, they haven’t been getting anywhere near enough pressure on the QB, but they have been forcing a ton of turnovers. This is acceptable but not ideal, but fading Mike Vick is exactly where we want to be, so they’re a solid play. The Steelers gameplan last night was pretty simple; alternate between handing off to Le’Veon Bell, dumping off to Le’Veon Bell, direct snaps to Le’Veon Bell, or “EFF IT, I’M GOING DEEP,” as Vick channeled his inner Sex Cannon. San Diego should have had a couple more interceptions than they did, so I would start the better Cardinals with confidence.
The Jets have quietly become the best defense east of the Mississippi. The Broncos have had better results, but of all the top scoring D/STs thus far, the Jets are the only one without a defensive TD. They’re also not quite getting to the QB as much as I’d like my D/ST to, but they’ve been suppressing yards and scoring sufficiently well. Their secondary has picked up the slack with forcing turnovers. Some people think Kirk Cousins is a pretty decent QB. I’ve also had a grown American adult ask me what state New Jersey is in, and I’m assuming there’s a pretty big overlap between those two examples.
Tier 1.5: Green Bay
The cheese stands alo— wait, I used this last week? Let’s try again.
The moldy dairy product is in a state of existence in which no other products, dairy or otherwise, are in close proximity.
It’s just a coincidence that the Packers are in the same spot this week, but it’s indicative of where they stand as a D/ST. They’re definitely a good unit, but I think they’ve been a product of matchups more than anything else. Still, there’s something to be said for a D/ST that comes through in a good matchup, and the Packers have now done so 4 weeks in a row. They’re also a different monster at home, and as they showed last week against St. Louis, they don’t even need Aaron Rodgers to be superhuman for their D/ST to roll.
Tier 2: Tennessee, Detroit, New England, Cincinnati, Carolina, Seattle
It’s a very strange day where Carolina goes into Seattle as 7-point underdogs and expects the same D/ST score, but this is the world we live in. Navigating this tier is going to separate the streamers into two categories, happy or pissed off. I suggest that it’s easier to navigate by going worst-to-best.
The first two D/STs to get crossed off are Carolina and Detroit. Big road underdogs simply are not the subset of teams we want to be backing, even in a low-scoring game, and even with an elite defensive back like Josh Norman. It’s like buying a scratch off ticket; you could win big, but you’re better off lighting your money on fire and at least getting some crooked looks from the people around you.
Detroit, meanwhile, has too many question marks on the other side of the ball. Matthew Stafford is horrible – he was benched for Dan Orlovsky before the game was entirely out of reach! – and short fields are hard to defend. Stream the Lions at your own risk.
New England, meanwhile, is very interesting, and their value can swing up or down quite rapidly depending on Andrew Luck’s status. As of right now, I think the common thinking is that Luck will be starting. With this game having such a high over/under, and with New England being on the road, I would lean against starting them. They should have a rather high upside though, so we could do a lot worse. A 30-24 Patriots win is the type of game we should be expecting.
If you have Seattle, you probably should just bite the bullet and start them. For such a low-scoring Vegas profile and a 7-point spread, there really shouldn’t be any nagging doubts…and yet the Seahawks have struggled their way through their first five games. If/when they regress with regard to forcing turnovers, you’ll be glad you started them.
That leaves Tennessee or Cincinnati. Team availability may be the biggest thing when it comes to choosing between these two options. The Titans have a better matchup and are at home, while the Bengals have a worse matchup and are on the road. If only it were that easy, since the Bengals are also certainly better than the Titans in the abstract. Interestingly enough, before controlling for different opponents, the Titans and Bengals have very similar D/ST scoring profiles on the season, so I would lean toward the home team here.
Tier 2.5: Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Atlanta
The rankings go down to team 16 this week, but they might as well stop at Atlanta. There’s a pretty harsh tier break from 2.5 to 3.
Atlanta is the highest variance team on this tier, so if you want a big boom/bust play, they’re the better birds here. Philadelphia has a very similar profile, but their game is looking at a much higher Vegas total, which gives them a similar upside but a much lower floor.
Meanwhile, the Vikings are a rather boring, safe play that you can probably avoid in most leagues, but are a fine fall back if you punt your D/ST decision into free agency to save a waiver claim. They’ve got the highest floor of any team outside of the Tier 1/1.5.
Anything lower or not listed can be safely avoided. Note that the #15 Buffalo get the Jaguars next week, and are still probably worth starting through a bad matchup if you’re not comfortable streaming.
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Best of luck in Week 6!