Defense Wins Championships (Week 15)

The Bills D/ST has a great rest of season schedule

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.

The fantasy bloodbath that was Week 14 has left an uneasy feeling among fantasy football players. For some of us, we escaped relatively unscathed. It might seem like much ado about nothing to call it a bloodbath. Others of us saw very strong teams outscored by a single player, Le’Veon Bell.

In short, it was a weird week.

Our projection model also had very unsatisfactory results. Top tier teams (Minnesota, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Miami) scored an average of eight points, while the average D/ST scored a robust 9.7 points overall! Where did those extra points come from? Atlanta (Tier 2) scored a ridiculous 29 points, joined by Tier 3 Carolina (21 points), unranked Green Bay (19 points), and unranked Chicago (17 points) at the top of the table.

Big disappointments included the Seahawks (-2 points) and Lions (5 points), however the very high average D/ST score for the week makes some of the 7- and 8-point scorers look a lot worse than they really were. As a whole, though, the week resulted in our lowest rank correlation of the season, recording -0.025 – essentially purely random results overall. The only consolation was the randomness was widespread, not systemic to our model: correlations for consensus rankings were even slightly worse.

If you survived your playoff games, congratulations and good luck. If not? Take a break, enjoy some football on the weekends, and try to reevaluate your strategy for next year. And there’s always a very important need to keep fantasy football (and all games) in proper context within your own life and the world around you.

Week 15 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier) – all scoring assumes MFL Standard, from www.myfantasyleague.com.

1. Seattle Seahawks, 11.3 – Tier 1
2. Buffalo Bills, 10.9 – Tier 1
3. New York Giants, 10.4 – Tier 1
4. Miami Dolphins, 10.2 – Tier 2
5. Green Bay Packers, 9.9 – Tier 2
6. Baltimore Ravens, 9.9 – Tier 2
7. Minnesota Vikings, 9.8 – Tier 2
8. Houston Texans, 9.2 – Tier 3
9. Kansas City Chiefs, 9.1 – Tier 3
10. Pittsburgh Steelers, 9.1 – Tier 3
11. Atlanta Falcons, 8.8 – Tier 3
12. New York Jets, 8.6 – Tier 4
13. Dallas Cowboys, 8.5 – Tier 4
14. New England Patriots, 8.4 – Tier 4
15. Arizona Cardinals, 7.9 – Tier 5
16. Washington Redskins, 7.9 – Tier 5

Also on Tier 5 are the Oakland Raiders (7.6).

Tier 1 – Seattle, Buffalo, New York Giants

The Seattle Seahawks are coming off what might be their worst loss of the Russell Wilson era. For Seahawks D/ST owners, it would prompt a very awkward decision: thankfully, the Los Angeles Rams are the Week 15 foe, and the Los Angeles Rams are horrible. For one, Jared Goff is not very good yet. He might never be very good, but for now, we can say he definitely is not very good. They are a great opponent for D/STs regardless of who the D/ST is, but the Seahawks are definitely good enough to capitalize. Their Earl Thomas-sized hole in the secondary (which feels wrong to even say) will not be the same liability that it was against the Packers. Their pass rush should cause him fits.

And for anybody with lingering doubts the Vegas team total for the Rams is under 12 points at the time of publication. That is about as low as will ever be hung in a sportsbook for any matchup in any year. Seattle is on Tier 1 with two other teams, but they may well stand alone at the top (with the other two on tier 1.5).

Buffalo has been a very interesting D/ST all year long. For a bit of history, they were one of the top D/STs in 2014. In 2015, they had a horrible season, especially with regard to their pass rush. Finally though, they’ve hit their stride, and a great matchup against the Cleveland Browns is more than enough to justify a start this week. Yes, it is true that the Bills have been struggling on defense lately. Their last D/ST score of 10+ points came in Week 5, after all. However, the Browns cure all ills on the defensive end, led by a revolving door of QBs and a dearth of talent just about everywhere. D/STs have averaged 11.7 points per game against Cleveland over the season and have not yet truly punished an opponent yet. The lowest score they’ve conceded to a D/ST so far this year is 6 points.

Look for multiple sacks, multiple turnovers, and a relatively low score allowed by the Bills defense.

New York sticks out here and it might not be for the right reasons. For one, their opponent Detroit has been very efficient on the offensive end all year long. Matthew Stafford has really turned around his reputation as a turnover-prone gunslinger, and I admit I was very surprised to see them rank so high in the algorithm. Part of that is because Stafford has been so much more efficient with his interceptions than he has been throughout his career; part of it also is that this game is being played in New Jersey, and Vegas has the Lions pegged to struggle a little bit offensively.

Intuitively, I would treat the Giants as more of a strong Tier 2 team than a weak Tier 1 team; however, that distinction might be overblown, since the tiers themselves are fairly arbitrary anyway. Certainly, the Giants held the Cowboys in check last week, and the Cowboys are probably a better offense than the Giants’ opponent in Week 15. Jason Pierre-Paul was missed but not overwhelmingly so.

Tier 2 – Miami, Green Bay, Baltimore, Minnesota

If you have made it this far with either Baltimore or Minnesota, you should probably just fire them up one more time. The Vikings disappointed in the end last week, but over the course of the season have given us too many strong performances to really throw shade at them now. They have a home game, they have a very vulnerable and exploitable Colts team as their opponent, and they profile as a fairly low-floor, high-ceiling, solid play overall.

Baltimore can be treated very similarly, but for slightly different reasons. While the Vikings started strong and have faded recently defensively, the Raven’s opponent (Philadelphia) started strong and has faded offensively. Overall, they are still a decent team if you take their entire body of work, but they have been much worse lately. The Ravens run defense is their strength, so Carson Wentz will be forced to throw; I still do not think that is a role that suits him yet. This is pegged as a very low scoring game by Vegas, and the Ravens are favored by nearly a touchdown. While I like Baltimore and Minnesota the most among this tier, I like the Ravens more, and would even take them over the Giants in Tier 1.

The Dolphins are very hard to assess right now, because we know now that Ryan Tannehill will not be playing. They are also going to be playing on the road, marking an odd week in which both the Jets and Giants will be playing at home on the same week (albeit Saturday and Sunday, respectively). Matt Moore is a solid backup QB, but he is a backup QB for a reason – and so there are a number of scenarios that exist where Miami plays well defensively, but still gets punished because their offense is a liability.

Miami would be a much more reliable play at home. The matchup is still great: Bryce Petty still isn’t very good, the Jets offense has been sputtering, and overall they are one of the worst teams in the league. The Dolphins should probably be started in every competitive league across 12 teams, but with perhaps only 4 teams still in the hunt for a title right now in the average fantasy league, they can perhaps be left on the bench/wire.

The last team on this tier are the Green Bay Packers. Fresh of a throttling of the Seahawks, they go on the road to Chicago. You should see a theme here: decent defensive team plays a bad offense, and the D/ST ranks well. I’ve been saying it for years: it’s not rocket science. The interesting parts are trying to distinguish between teams on the same tier, or trying to break them up into tiers to begin with, but finding the “good D/STs” for any given week is relatively easy.

And make no mistake: the Packers are a good D/ST this week. While the Bears QB Barkley showed some signs of life in Week 14, overall, we can still expect a relatively sloppy game by the offense. Alshon Jeffery is back but he has not played in four weeks, and the offense struggled with him there too. Like the Dolphins, this is a little shakier by way of being on the road, but it is still too good to turn down.

For these top seven teams, I would target them in the following order if my money were on the line: Seattle, then Buffalo and Baltimore, then Minnesota, New York, Green Bay, then Miami.

Tier 3 – Houston, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Atlanta

All of these make fine choices in Week 15. They are on the third tier, but because of the abundance of great matchups this week, they still rate very well in the model. Atlanta just came off their nearly season-high D/ST score, and they probably could have had a season-high score had they kept their foot on the gas all game long. Losing the shutout cost them big for fantasy. They continue their West Coast tour with a game against the lowly 49ers – while you should never expect a 20+ point game to repeat itself, this game does profile very similarly to last week’s against Los Angeles. Temper expectations but start the Falcons with confidence if that was your plan going into the week.

Kansas City deserves special mention, mostly because they have been a scoring machine at the position all year long. They are now 2nd overall in D/ST scoring behind Minnesota, and a full point per game separates them from #3. They’ve been crushing everybody, even the Oakland Raiders. If you have the Chiefs on your roster, you should probably try to avoid getting cute: Just start them no matter what else you have available, perhaps with the sole exception of the Seahawks. The matchup against Tennessee is not great, but the Chiefs have too much upside to bench right now.

This advice may seem contrary to the usual theme here; in one sense, it might be. However, like Atlanta, the Chiefs are on the third tier only because the entire league projects highly, not because they project low. A score 9.1 is a great expectation to have on any given week.

Of the two remaining teams on this tier, the Houston Texans are probably the more appealing option. They get the Jacksonville Jaguars at home, a team which has only punished opposing D/STs on perhaps 3 separate occasions all year long. Otherwise, like Cleveland, they have been exceedingly generous. Blake Bortles looks more like a rookie than he does a 3rd year player, and the offense as a whole has struggled to put up points, protect the quarterback, and secure the ball. Last I checked, those were all great things for an opposing D/ST.

Finally, we come to Pittsburgh. The Steelers ran all over the Bills last week, quite literally, and still allowed enough points by Buffalo to keep the game fairly close. Weather was certainly a factor in that one. The Steelers go on the road again, this time to Cincinnati, where it is still unknown whether A.J. Green will be able to play. With so many great options available in the ranks above them, it makes it fairly easy to pass on Pittsburgh this week.

Tier 4 and below

Denver is probably the most important name here, but with a game against New England, Broncos D/ST owners have probably had a contingency plan in place for a while now. Just go ahead and go forward with whatever plan you already had, or audible into something already discussed above. The Patriots are too good to fade with any D/ST, even in a home game with a relatively low scoring profile. The model expects 7.0 points from Denver this week.

Their opponent, New England, makes the more interesting deep-league play. The Patriots had some huge problems with ball security on Monday Night in Week 14, but overall, that is very uncharacteristic for them. They go into Denver as small favorites in a low-scoring game, against a QB and an offense that has struggled lately, and so probably have a decent outlook. While you can do better in most cases with a team listed above, they make a fine backup plan or “hail Mary”-type play otherwise.

My apologies for the late entry this week. My final exams are finally done for the semester, and I can focus on leisure for the next month as the season winds its way down.

Best of luck to everybody in Week 15!

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