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.
“Trust the process.”
“Process over results.”
“Don’t be results-oriented.”
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However you want to phrase it, and there are limitless ways to do so, these are all equivalent statements. Each one is a way of separating your decisions from their consequences. In fantasy football, the correct choice does not always score the most fantasy points. An extreme case makes this obvious. If Antonio Brown is outscored in any given week by Kyle Juszczyk, it does not follow that the fullback was the better start that week. To the contrary, regardless of the results, Antonio Brown is virtually always going to be a better start than Kyle Juszczyk.
Good decisions do not always depend on the results. Take a coin flip. If I told you that I could make the right choice on as many coins as you wanted to flip, you should be rightly skeptical. Indeed, if I were to claim I could guess the correct result every time, I would be a liar. But with a coin flip, the odds are even for the two results. Choosing Heads or Tails does not matter, thus there is no wrong choice. The same is true with a six-sided dice. Any guess can never be wrong since each choice is equally likely.
Things change when we throw two dice instead. Now, rolls of seven are the most likely outcome, and it becomes the only correct guess (regardless of the actual number rolled!). So if we play 100 times, and I choose seven each time, and the total is not seven for even a single trial, I still chose correctly 100% of the time.
It should be fairly obvious how this applies to fantasy football. This is not to say that results are irrelevant here because that is wholly inaccurate. This column takes a brief look every week at the results, and it’s a very important part of record-keeping and tuning our projection model. However, you should notice that no individual trial is ever judged by its result alone, and unless we can discover an actionable flaw in the model, it should stay that way.
Two weeks ago, our results were the best they had been all year, and it hardly slowed down for Week 12. Our rank correlation was 0.554. Our average weekly finish (not my favorite metric here, but helps paint a picture) has been 0.320, which is right in the middle of the range we can be happy with. Four of the last five weeks have been 0.398 or above, so perhaps we are running hot.
Week 13 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier) – all scoring assumes MFL Standard, from www.myfantasyleague.com.
- Denver Broncos, 10.1 – Tier 1
- Seattle Seahawks, 10.0 – Tier 1
- New England Patriots, 9.7 – Tier 1
- Baltimore Ravens, 9.5 – Tier 1.5
- Philadelphia Eagles, 9.3 – Tier 2
- San Diego Chargers, 9.0 – Tier 2
- Arizona Cardinals, 8.0 – Tier 3
- Green Bay Packers, 8.0 – Tier 3
- Dallas Cowboys, 8.0 – Tier 3
- San Francisco 49ers, 7.9 – Tier 3
- Pittsburgh Steelers, 7.9 – Tier 3
- Miami Dolphins, 7.9 – Tier 3
- Chicago Bears, 7.9 – Tier 3
- Oakland Raiders, 7.3 – Tier 4
- New Orleans Saints, 7.3 – Tier 4
- Cincinnati Bengals, 7.3 – Tier 4
Also on tier 4 this week are Washington (7.2), Atlanta (7.2), NY Jets (7.0), and Kansas City (7.0). On bye this week are Tennessee and Cleveland, and both can be dropped at will.
Tier 1 – Denver, Seattle, New England
We are at the point where it’s awfully easy to get too cute with your D/STs. With Denver and Seattle, we know who both these teams are. The Broncos have been a top tier D/ST over the past 30 weeks. The Seahawks have been a start-worthy team almost every week going back for years. Both Denver’s and Seattle’s opponents, the Jaguars and Panthers, respectively, have been top 8 D/ST matchups over the season.
On injuries:
Last week, there were a lot of questions about Seattle and their many injured players. Starters Michael Bennett, Earl Thomas, and DeShawn Shead each did not play, in addition to rotational players Damontre Moore and Brock Coyle. Yet the Seahawks were still projected 9.6 points… why? As it turns out, very few defensive players actually matter when it comes to D/ST scoring, because we are aggregating the performances of 11 players – not just 1 – and only care about very few stats – sacks, turnovers, and points/yards allowed. We also get to factor in the injured players replacement. For example, Michael Bennett’s snaps were taken by a committee of players led by Frank Clark, who himself is a very good pass rusher. The Seahawks came extremely close to their projected score of 9.6, finishing with 10 points in MFL.
Long story short: Start Denver, start Seattle, don’t look back.
New England rounds out the tier 1 teams with an excellent matchup against the Rams at home. Jared Goff looked good last week, but his opponent in Week 12 is nothing like what he will face with New England. Vegas has the Rams with 15.5 points on the week, and so the Patriots D/ST finds itself with a very high floor and ridiculous upside. They’re coming off back-to-back nine point games, and I would look for that to continue one more week.
Tier 1.5 – Baltimore
They are more “tier 1” than “tier 2” and so get their own designation this week, but the Ravens are a great choice in Week 13. They now have double-digit scores six weeks this year and only have two dud games otherwise. They get a home game against Miami, which is not a great matchup, but it is not much worse than average. However, the game profiles such that the Ravens should get plenty of chances to rush the passer against Miami’s poor offensive line. If they can manage an early lead, especially, look for them to keep pace with their weekly average this season with approximately 10 points in Week 13.
Tier 2 – Philadelphia, San Diego
Finally! The Eagles are back up in the range where they can be started with relative confidence. They have looked suspiciously close to “plug-and-play” territory for a while now, but in recent weeks have been giving us dud after dud after dud. Week 13 profiles differently. They are playing in Cincinnati, but the Bengals are in such offensive disarray right now that the Eagles are primed to take advantage. Without A.J. Green and Giovani Bernard, Cincinnati totaled just 283 passing yards and 64 rushing yards against the Ravens, and they managed just a single touchdown. Philadelphia is a slightly better defense than the Ravens. Expecting eight or nine points in MFL is very reasonable this week.
San Diego has quietly been one of the most solid D/STs in the game for the entire season, and especially for the second half. They just notched their sixth game of 12+ points this year and have a home game against the Buccaneers upcoming. The Chargers have averaged 9 points per game all year, and with an average matchup at home, we can expect something in that neighborhood once again.
For the six teams above, I would target them and start them in the exact order presented.
Tier 3 – Arizona, Green Bay, Dallas, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Miami, Chicago
You know, the usual suspects, like San Francisco… Chicago…
Pardon me while I throw up.
Dallas stands out on this tier, with a very winnable game at Minnesota. They are favored in a low-scoring game, and while the Cowboys do not have the scoring upside that some other teams offer, they do provide a fairly decent floor. Their heavy use of the run game serves to depress D/ST scoring opportunities, but at least they should have some scoring opportunities.
Similarly, Arizona is a D/ST that I have had such a hard time with this year. On paper they should be great, but in practice it has been a rollercoaster. They are sixth overall in scoring on the year, but haven’t scored 10+ in a game since Week 6. In Week 13 they get a team that just threw for 450 yards! Even at home it is a mediocre matchup, but the projection here is relatively mediocre too. eight points feels a little bit too high, but we try to avoid going “by feel” here anyway; a score of six to eight seems very likely.
It is also extremely easy to make the case that Miami belongs in this range. They have averaged eight points per game, the Ravens have conceded 8.3 points per game, and the Dolphins are small underdogs in a game with a very low scoring profile. By DVOA this past week, both of these teams are top eight defenses, and while the home team projects nearly two points better, both teams make fine starts.
…if you’re waiting for me to make the case for San Francisco, don’t. I won’t do it. I can’t do it. These are two very bad teams. If I had to start a D/ST from this game, it would be Chicago, at which point I would finally admit that I have a problem and just walk away from the game of fantasy football entirely. Both of these teams are very bad, but at least the Bears are playing at home.
That just leaves Green Bay and Pittsburgh. Contrary to the injury notes above with regard to Seattle, the Packers D/ST does appear to have been affected by their injuries (interestingly, they could have just been bad to begin with), although Philadelphia was not able to punish them for it in Week 12. Most notably, the Packers D/ST has had a very low floor, with multiple subzero scores. They get a home game against the $72 million man and his ragtag group of Texans, so the risk of a shootout is virtually nil.
Pittsburgh is an uninspiring D/ST who is coming off of two great games in a row, and who have a home game against the Giants. New York has been a decidedly average matchup, which is bad news for a Steelers D/ST that has only averaged seven points per game. However, seven points gets us in the ballpark of this tier this week, so we are in business. The Steelers will probably have to get out to a relatively early lead to score better than that, although Eli Manning has had four two-interception games this year.
This tier overall is a muddied mess. I would first target Arizona, Miami, and Dallas, with an emphasis on the Cowboys if you are risk averse or Arizona/Miami if you are not. Then, I would look at Green Bay, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and San Francisco in that order.
Tier 4 and below
The Vikings have been banished, but it is only temporary. This is their worst matchup of the season, with the only positive that it is at home. The Vikings should only be started if you have locked up a playoff seed, or if you simply cannot add a second D/ST. They should not be dropped with a game against Jacksonville next week.
Kansas City is in a similar boat, but their bad matchups stretch two weeks in a row. Make arrangements for next week also, because the Chiefs are also too good to drop. Home games against Tennessee and Denver await in the fantasy playoffs.
I expected the Bengals to project higher than they do. With a game against the Browns next week, they can be considered in the mix with the third tier teams in Week 13.
Best of luck to everybody, especially if you are fighting for the playoffs this week!
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