Defense Wins Championships (Week 4)

Josh Norman and the Redskins are the latest D/ST to face off against the Browns

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 five straight seasons. Each installment can be found at Empeopled.com every Tuesday morning. You can follow him on Twitter @dtlerch.

Hindsight evaluation is a difficult concept sometimes.

What makes a good fantasy start, anyway? Is it solely based on fantasy points? Surely not, otherwise you could argue Terrelle Pryor was a better start than Antonio Brown. After all, Pryor outscored Brown by a margin of 32.2 to 26.0 in Week 3. Or Adam Humphries and his 19.0 points made him approximately as good of a start as Odell Beckham, Jr. and his 19.10. Both premises are clearly ridiculous, although it might not be immediately obvious why.

That said, it’s difficult to deny that Terrelle Pryor was a great start in Week 3. According to FantasyPros ECR, he was listed as the WR50 before kickoff on Sunday. It is safe to say that the consensus was probably too low on him, but that he was also probably not the third best WR to start. Reality is probably somewhere in between.

Note the intentional use of the nebulous word “probably.” That word is precisely the best that we can say. There is no such thing as a “sure thing” in sports, in football, or in fantasy football. Underdogs can win. Favorites can lose. Streaks are made and ended every single game. Trends are true until they’re not, which should make you question anytime someone tries to sell you on a start/sit based on an overly-specific trend.

Back to D/STs: How would the Week 3 rankings have looked if we had the benefit of hindsight? They would differ from the week’s scoring leaders, but not by a ton. Using Week 3’s pre-kickoff Vegas lines but post-game metrics, the top tier would be Miami, Minnesota, and Kansas City. The second tier would be Carolina, Denver, Green Bay, Arizona, Baltimore, and Houston. The third tier would be New England, Cincinnati, and Seattle. Salty Vikings fans rejoice, your team is getting the respect they deserve – but it took factoring in their absolutely monster performance in Week 3 (and the benefit of hindsight) to be able to stake that claim.

Note that the above revision of history does not include any mention of D/ST TDs, and for good reason: They should be almost entirely omitted from your week-in-review. They are not entirely random, but they are rare enough to be treated as random. The Chiefs scored two of them in Week 3, and they still would have ranked #3 in our hindsight review. The Vikings scored one and ranked #2. The Bills scored one and came in at #14. Interestingly, the Bills and Eagles scored very well compared to their hindsight ranking; a bad sign going forward for backers of either team, perhaps.

Spearman’s rank correlation had this column at -0.01 in Week 3, while FantasyPros ECR was at -0.02. Essentially zero correlation across the board, which is a pretty clear numerical representation of a bloodbath. For fun, the rank correlation of the hindsight rankings from above was just 0.40, which helps to illustrate two things:

1. D/ST scoring is always extremely random
2. D/ST scoring is very unpredictable, even with the benefit of hindsight

But we move ever onward. We now have enough of a sample from 2016 alone to eliminate 2015 from the algorithm entirely (with the exception of QB interceptions, which is taken to be each QB’s career rate). We have escaped the notoriously poor early weeks with results approximately in line with ECR and a slight edge in two out of three weeks to date, and a significant deficit in Week 1.

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Week 4 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier) – all scoring assumes MFL Standard, from www.myfantasyleague.com.

1. Minnesota Vikings, 12.4 – Tier 1 (vs NYG)
2. Washington Redskins, 11.7 – Tier 1 (vs CLE)
3. Arizona Cardinals, 11.3 – Tier 1 (vs LA)
4. Houston Texans, 10.1 – Tier 2 (vs TEN)
5. New England Patriots, 9.7 – Tier 2 (vs BUF)
6. Denver Broncos, 9.4 – Tier 2 (at TB)
7. Carolina Panthers, 9.3 – Tier 2 (at ATL)
8. Cincinnati Bengals, 9.0 – Tier 2 (vs MIA)
9. Buffalo Bills, 8.5 – Tier 3 (at NE)
10. Baltimore Ravens, 8.5 – Tier 3 (vs OAK)
11. Kansas City Chiefs, 8.2 – Tier 3 (at PIT)
12. Seattle Seahawks, 8.0 – Tier 4 (at NYJ)
13. Miami Dolphins, 7.8 – Tier 4 (at CIN)
14. New York Jets, 7.7 – Tier 4 (vs SEA)
15. San Diego Chargers, 7.6 – Tier 4 (vs NO)
16. Detroit Lions, 7.4 – Tier 4 (at CHI)

On bye this week are Green Bay and Philadelphia.

Note: I tend to be very aggressive with regard to dropping teams on bye weeks. If your league has deep benches or you disagree, please feel free to proceed otherwise. However, I would personally be dropping both Green Bay and Philadelphia in most formats.

Tier 1 – Minnesota, Washington, and Arizona

Minnesota, before Week 1, was very easy to write off, given that they were on the road and starting Shaun Hill on short notice. Their resulting score was similarly easy to write off with half of their points coming from D/ST TDs, and the other half being a strong (but not overwhelming) line of 2 sacks, 1 interception, and 2 fumble recoveries against a weak opponent. Their game Week 2 would have been enough to change things in a hurry if it weren’t for a road game in Week 3 against the NFL’s best offense from the past 18+ weeks. One of the core axioms of Defense Wins Championships is that matchups dictate most of the scoring outlook for D/STs, and Carolina last Tuesday was the worst matchup of the 32.

The Vikings made both the Panthers and that axiom look silly. With all due respect to the Chiefs own league-leading score of 35 in Week 3, the Vikings had the most impressive D/ST performance of the week. Eight sacks, three interceptions, a safety, and a punt return TD – all while holding the Panthers to just 10 points of offense – Minnesota dominated in every facet of the game Sunday. Are the Vikings 2016’s version of last year’s Broncos? Owners should hope not, because after their torrid start last year, the Broncos came down to earth in a hurry. After their bye in Week 7, the Broncos were just the 12th best D/ST from Weeks 8 through 16. It turns out it takes a lot of luck and the right matchups to be a top-scoring D/ST; who would have thought?

If you have the Vikings on your team, buckle up and enjoy the ride. You’ll be hard pressed to get away before Week 16, just as Broncos owners probably felt forced to do the same last year. Their end result was still great despite the relatively low second-half floor. The 30% of leagues where the Vikings are unowned should become virtually nil by Sunday morning. You can make the case for Minnesota over any of the 100%-owned D/STs with their strong expectation in the immediate week; long term, there probably is not much edge to be gained either way, so do not stress about it too much if your FAAB or waiver priority needs to go elsewhere first. Streamers should probably put in a claim of at least between 6%-8% of FAAB, however.

But enough about the Vikings. Joining them in the top tier this week is Washington, who get their shot at the Cleveland Browns. In order to back Washington, we need to address a very important question: Was Miami a bust last week?

Absolutely not! The Dolphins notched four sacks, one turnover, and gave up just 17 points on offense. Not anything to brag about, but far from worth a panic. Washington should be able to do something similar this upcoming weekend, which was enough for 10 points for Miami. It should be no surprise that Washington clocks in with almost 12 points of expectation. With Washington available in approximately 95% of leagues, they make the most obvious streaming play of the week.

Rounding out the top tier this week is Arizona. Their ugly loss last week obscures how good they’ve been defensively. They – not the Broncos, not the Chiefs – were the top D/ST in 2015. They scored 23 points in Week 2 as they dismantled the Buccaneers. Most importantly, even while playing from behind for a majority of Week 3, they managed 9 D/ST points, including four sacks. In Week 4 they get the lowly Rams in Glendale. A home game against the worst offense in the NFL should be enough for any D/ST, but it certainly helps when it’s a strong defense to boot.

Tier 2 – Houston, New England, Denver, Carolina, Cincinnati

Tier 2 is fairly boring this week. New England, Denver, and Carolina should be owned in virtually 100% of leagues, although the Patriots numbers are lagging behind the others significantly. The Texans, despite a bad matchup last week, should also be virtually 100% owned. And the fifth entry, Cincinnati, is owned in nearly every competitive league as well (although just 88% overall).

The Patriots might be my favorite on this tier, simply because their next few matchups are so good: vs Buffalo this week, then at Cleveland, then vs a somewhat-exploitable Cincinnati team. That said, Denver and Carolina are too good to drop for the Patriots. The Texans probably are too, but the Bengals are a justifiable swap for the Patriots.

All that said, if you have one of these five teams, you should probably just sit tight unless the Vikings are on the wire.

Tier 3 – Buffalo, Baltimore, Kansas City

The Chiefs are surprisingly low here, however looking back farther than one week starts putting this in a bit of context. The Steelers have still got themselves a very good offense. The Chiefs are not going to get six (6!) interceptions per week. The Chiefs next few weeks also make them very difficult to endorse: at Pittsburgh, then their bye, then at Oakland, vs New Orleans, and at Indianapolis (with a game at Carolina lurking just two weeks later). With or without Justin Houston, that’s not a pretty picture. However, they should probably be owned in 100% of leagues, so that will force some awkward decisions for Chiefs D/ST owners this week and next.

Buffalo’s ranking here has a good deal of uncertainty since we still are not entirely sure what is happening at QB for the Patriots this week. All we can say today is that it could be Garoppolo, it could be Brissett, it could be both, or it could be neither. Helpful, I know. But using an estimated line of New England -4.5 and an over/under of 42, the Bills still rank fairly well. With a relative dearth of streamers this week and the Bills available in 75% of leagues, they are probably worth a grab.

The Ravens have quietly put together a solid D/ST this season through three games. They’ve averaged nearly a full sack per game more this year than last, and have met their great matchups with decent scores. Make no mistake: the Raiders are a very bad matchup, even if the game is being played in Baltimore. With the Ravens available in 50% of leagues they make a possible streamer, but should be probably be avoided except in desperation.

Tier 4 – Seattle, Miami, NY Jets, San Diego, Detroit

Seattle does not get the small sample size boost from facing the Jets, because interceptions are treated with career averages when it comes to opposing QBs. However, Ryan Fitzpatrick is coming off a 6-pick game and is facing one of the league’s best defenses. Seattle is universally owned and should be universally started; do not be scared by this ranking, or by Russell Wilson’s injured knee.

Seattle’s opponent, the Jets, probably make my favorite speculative grab on the waiver wire on this tier this week. If you are considering the Ravens in the tier above, be sure that the Jets are owned first before settling. There is a nonzero chance that Russell Wilson sits, and even if he does play, there’s a chance we see Trevone Boykin for multiple series. The Seahawks may very well be in a position where they want to throw, and the Jets can punish that if they get lucky. They’re available in more than 40% of leagues and should be started in most this week. If you grab them now, you can always reevaluate later in the week if Russell Wilson looks fine in practice.

Now that 2015 has been purged from the mechanism, the Miami ranking here is probably an artifact of their opponent’s 7 sack game in Week 1. The Dolphins are not a team I would want to start on the road here. Similarly, the Lions are on the road in Chicago, and even with an exceptional matchup, I would not be thrilled to start the Lions D/ST. Through three weeks they have just 11 points, good enough for 28th overall. Unlike the Ravens above and Chargers below, the Lions have not been taking advantage of their good matchups at the same clip. That scares me, and it should probably scare you away too.

The Chargers, like the Ravens, have quietly put up a solid start by taking advantage of good matchups. Are the Saints a good matchup? No, probably not, but they aren’t the same as they have been in years past. The Chargers are not great but can certainly lay claim to a 7 point D/ST score if you are desperate.

We are at the point in the 2016 season where we can start talking about 2016 as it stands alone, rather than citing what happened last year. We are also at the point where we should have a pretty good idea of how good or bad our own fantasy teams are. Be honest with where you are at, and you should be able to make your decisions going forward with a clear mind.

As always, thank you for reading, especially during an especially wordy recap. Best of luck in Week 4!

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