Defense Wins Championships (Week 12)

The Titans D/ST are a prime streaming target Week 12

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.

Reserve a page in the record book for 2016’s Week 11:

• There were 12 missed extra points, a single-week record.

• Ezekiel Elliott set a Dallas Cowboys rookie rushing record, continuing to cement him as a second-tier RB1 behind only David Johnson and Le’Veon Bell.

• Two teams with winning records squared off in Mexico City, featuring the highest combined winning percentage of any game played to date outside of the USA.

And in our corner of the Internet, where all we care about is breaking D/STs? We had our best week of the year, and D/STs were about as predictable as you can ever expect them to be.

Tier 1/1.5 teams scored 7, 8, 10, and 21 for an average of 11.5 points each. The average D/ST overall in Week 11 scored 7.8.

Tier 2 teams scored 5, 7, 9, 10, 10, 10, 22, and 22 points for an average of 11.9.

Even the Tier 3 teams scored well above league average, hauling in 8, 9, and 11 points to average 9.3.

Those 15 teams accounted for an average score of 11.3, compared to just 3.8 points per game from the other 13 teams in Tier 4 or below. Rank correlation here was the highest I’ve seen since at least the start of 2015, coming in at 0.565. Even the scores themselves were strongly correlated with the projected score, which because of touchdowns and special teams is rare. The projected scores vs actual scores showed r=0.597. Cool stuff.

Still, remember that one of the basic truths about D/STs is that they are extremely variable. Just as we cannot be overly critical when a small sample size goes weird, we also cannot celebrate too much when they go our way. Week 11 definitely went our way. Let’s see if that continues once more!

Week 12 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier) – all scoring assumes MFL Standard, from www.myfantasyleague.com.

1. Buffalo Bills, 10.1 – Tier 1 (vs JAX)
2. New York Giants, 10.0 – Tier 1 (at CLE)
3. Baltimore Ravens, 10.0 – Tier 1 (vs CIN)
4. Seattle Seahawks, 9.6 – Tier 2 (at TB)
5. Denver Broncos, 9.6 – Tier 2 (vs KC)
6. Tennessee Titans, 9.2 – Tier 2 (at CHI)
7. Kansas City Chiefs, 9.1 – Tier 2 (at DEN)
8. New England Patriots, 9.1 – Tier 2 (at NYJ)
9. Miami Dolphins, 9.0 – Tier 2 (vs SF)
10. New Orleans Saints, 8.4 – Tier 3 (vs LA)
11. Detroit Lions, 8.2 – Tier 3 (vs MIN)
12. San Diego Chargers, 8.0 – Tier 3 (at HOU)
13. Atlanta Falcons, 8.0 – Tier 3 (vs ARI)
14. Philadelphia Eagles, 8.0 – Tier 3 (vs GB)
15. Minnesota Vikings, 7.9 – Tier 3 (at DET)
16. Oakland Raiders, 7.8 – Tier 3 (vs CAR)

Also on Tier 3 is Pittsburgh (7.8).

Zero teams are on bye this week. Breathe. You made it (except for next week).

Tier 1 – Buffalo, New York Giants, Baltimore

I don’t know about you, but I love that there are some fresh names at the top this week, especially since we have all 32 teams in action.

The Bills should be obvious here. Their last few games have been very bad, but then consider their matchups: at Miami, vs New England, and then at Seattle (five points total in three games!). In their other seven games, they’ve scored an average of 13.6 points per game, and they get the Jaguars at home this week. That really should be enough to sell you. Blake Bortles is bad, the Jaguars offense is bad, and the Bills D/ST is good (and probably very good!). This is the obvious #1 D/ST in Week 12 and should be picked up and started in every league.

The Browns have been a top-tier matchup for opposing D/STs now for the entire season. The lowest score so far against them has been six points, and only three teams failed to score 10 points or more. The Steelers D/ST just clocked them for 22 D/ST points, and the Giants can expect another 10+ this week. Their pass rush is finally coming along, and they have been scoring approximately league-average recently without any fumbles recovered – a mostly random stat that we can expect to regress towards its mean. With a bonkers matchup the Giants are another obvious play this week, although of slightly less value than the Bills. Their next few matchups should render the Giants a single-week option only.

Rounding out the tier is Baltimore. Off the top of your head, would you guess that they are a top eight D/ST on the season? They are in the group at the top of the streamers, and so a home game against the Bengals – who are suddenly down A.J. Green and Giovani Bernard – becomes a very enticing spot. The Ravens got pretty thoroughly beaten by the Cowboys, but have otherwise been very solid recently. Football Outsider’s DVOA had them as the #2 defense going into Week 11, and they should remain near the top for Week 12. This game (along with Denver in the tier below) have the week’s lowest Vegas totals for their opponent.

Buffalo is the very clear target of the three, but all three are great starts for Week 12. In more competitive waiver wires I would give a slight edge to Baltimore over the Giants, because they have a slightly higher chance of relevance going forward.

Tier 2 – Seattle, Denver, Tennessee, Kansas City, New England, Miami

Contrary to the top tier options, the ownership rates of the second tier should be much higher. Even after their bye, the Broncos should be owned across the board. Both Seattle and Kansas City are also top plug-and-play D/STs going forward.

New England is probably the next best option, and could even be as good as the three previous mentions. They have not capitalized with their D/ST yet, at least not consistently, but most of their metrics look fine. In good matchups – and the Jets so far have been the league best – the Patriots should be started with confidence. Next week might be even better with a home game against the Rams.

The Titans have something in between a good matchup and a ridiculously good matchup, and we cannot be quite sure which. First, we are not even sure which QB is going to be starting for the Bears. Second, if it is Matt Barkley, we can be reasonably certain that he will be turnover-prone, but we cannot say it 100%. Still, the odds are good, and I am assuming that the matchup is almost enough for this to be in the top tier.

Miami is at home, rather large favorites in a low-scoring game, and are playing a team that concedes big scores to D/STs. It really isn’t rocket science. The Dolphins could be significantly worse than they actually are, and they would still be a very strong play. Week 11 was weird, in that the Dolphins did not really translate their game to D/ST scoring, despite the 7 point score. Most of that was due to the Rams own futility in moving the ball, and a more competent team would have punished the Dolphins. Still, the 49ers are weak enough that they could end up in the same place, only with the upside of a few more counting stats actually counting.

I would stream New England, then Tennessee, then Miami.

Tier 3 and below

Only a few of these teams are worth mentioning, but some are very important.

Minnesota: Last gasp of life, or was Week 11 a return to dominance? Probably neither, but this is not a good matchup regardless. They are on the road and underdogs, and while the game is moderately low-scoring, the Lions are the ones who aim to profit on that, not the Vikings. I still think they are too good to drop and have games against Jacksonville and Indianapolis remaining. This week is tough and so is next week, so you may want to resign yourself to an extra roster spot at the position, if you can afford it.

Philadelphia: DVOA’s darling has been really struggling the last few weeks. Carson Wentz has looked bad, the defense has not been keeping the score down, and they’ve been downright pathetic at getting sacks. Their special teams have not kept them afloat like they have in past seasons, and so the Eagles are a clear drop candidate. They will have at least one good matchup remaining in the final weeks of the season, and they do profile as league-average in Week 12. If you are stubborn or holding out hope they match their on-field performance with fantasy points, then you can still justify a keep.

Arizona: The last two weeks are hard to judge. On the one hand, they allowed fewer than 300 yards of offense in each week. On the other hand, their opponents were San Francisco and Minnesota, and they scored just 17 points in those two games. Not bad, but hardly better than streaming. In Week 12, though, the judgment becomes moot given they are at Atlanta. They are a sit in all formats. Things get a little better next week vs Washington and Week 14 at Miami, so they can be sat or dropped depending on your available options. I don’t think they are worse than streaming, but they might not be much better either.

Best of luck to everybody in Week 12!

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