Can Lovie Smith’s defense be trusted Week 5?
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.
Isn’t it nice to finally have a week in the NFL without controversy?
Week 4 was once again a mixed bag for D/ST streaming. Carolina followed through after their top ranking with 19 MFL points, and the Panthers showed that even a mediocre defensive performance can lead to a huge score against a turnover prone QB. Jameis Winston threw four interceptions, which statistically gave Carolina ~52% chance to score a defensive TD.
As it turns out, defensive TDs are a good thing for D/STs. Who could have predicted that? The top three scoring D/STs – Atlanta, Detroit, and Carolina – all scored at least one touchdown, with Atlanta scoring two. Despite conceding an average of almost 20 points per game, these D/STs scored 22, 22, and 19 points, respectively.
Could the success of the Falcons or Lions have been predicted? Perhaps, but I would be very leery of both units going forward. Neither team has a top-tier pass rush, but if they start to get to the QB a little more effectively, they (with Atlanta in particular) could be decent matchup plays.
Green Bay and Denver are on the opposite end of that spectrum. Both did very well in Week 4, and both of them have been able to notch sufficient sacks per game to be usable almost every week. Denver should be considered valuable enough to hold through most bad matchups, and should not be dropped to stream. Green Bay isn’t quite there but is probably close, and a good Week 5 matchup ensures the Packers are safe on your roster for another week.
It wasn’t all good, of course. Indianapolis was projected second (note that followers on Twitter would have learned that the unlucky Colts would rank closer to 7th by kickoff), and they could only sack Blake Bortles once. Philadelphia ranked third, and their “high variance” tag proved somewhat telling. The Eagles finished with one sack, as did another very disappointing D/ST, Buffalo. The Trio of Sadness managed just 4.3 D/ST points each, and they overshadowed healthy showings from San Diego, NY Jets, Baltimore, Cincinnati, and Oakland.
However, the most disappointing game of the week easily came from Arizona. The Cardinals put on a clinic for how not to win games in the NFL, decent ball movement paired with really costly turnovers. I know it’s a surprise to see, but it turns out that it’s hard to win with increments of three points when your opponent keeps scoring seven at a time. Arizona matched the aforementioned Trio with just a single sack. The Cardinals are on thin ice going forward, since their pass rush is not keeping up with the turnovers they’ve been generating.
Averages by tier
1 & 1.5: 8.3
2 & 2.5: 6.75
3 & 3.5: 9.7
The average D/ST score for the week was 8.2.
We’ve been stepping down the contribution from 2014 game by game, and for Week 5 the data is 100% from this year.
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Week 5 D/ST Scoring (Team – expected points – tier)
- Denver Broncos – 13.6 – 1 (high floor)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers – 12.5 – 1 (high variance)
- New England Patriots – 12.3 – 1 (high floor)
- Green Bay Packers – 11.6 – 1.5 (high floor)
- New York Giants – 11.1 – 2
- Buffalo Bills – 11.1 – 2
- Arizona Cardinals – 10.7 – 2
- Tennessee Titans – 10.6 – 2
- Cincinnati Bengals – 10.4 – 2.5 (high floor)
- Atlanta Falcons – 10.2 – 2.5 (high variance)
- Baltimore Ravens – 10.0 – 2.5 (high floor)
- Philadelphia Eagles – 9.6 – 3 (high variance)
- Kansas City Chiefs – 8.6 – 3.5 (high floor)
- Jacksonville Jaguars – 8.3 – 3.5
- Indianapolis Colts – 8.2 – 3.5
- Pittsburgh Steelers – 8.1 – 3.5
On bye this week are Carolina, Minnesota, Miami, and the Jets. All are safely droppable in most formats.
Tier 1: Denver, Tampa Bay, and New England
Denver is the clear-cut favorite this week, and it should be pretty obvious. The Broncos have the top score through four weeks, they haven’t scored below 10 yet on the year, and they’ve got a good matchup with the Oakland Raiders. Even though this game is on the road, Denver should be owned and started in 100% of leagues. They’re also the only defense right now that I feel entirely confident saying should be owned until their bye in week 7.
Tampa Bay…where have we seen this before? As I like to say, “Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” Well, since we’ve been fooled once, I think that means we’re safe this time. The Bucs are at home against the Jaguars, and both offenses here have sucked. The Jaguars have failed to score points, the Bucs have failed to throw to their own team, and one of these two defenses should be able to profit. While Jacksonville makes a decent start themselves, being a road underdog makes them less appealing. The Buccaneers have had a respectable pass rush and have forced sufficient turnovers that I will probably be starting them in far too many leagues. Wish me luck.
The Patriots round out this trio with a very strong defense facing Brandon Weeden. Are we at the point where I can just say “enough said?” New England has 13 sacks through just three games, and they’ve also pulled in five interceptions. They’ve also been blowing teams out and are favored by 8.0 on the road. This is a recipe for success, so don’t hesitate to put them in your lineups. Good things happen when QBs like Weeden are forced to throw, even if they end up scoring a TD or two along the way.
Tier 1.5: Green Bay
The cheese stands alone. The Packers made Colin Kaepernick look pretty silly on Sunday, but then again so have almost every other team in the NFL. The Pack are 10-point favorites at home, and they should be able to do what they want against a pretty hapless Rams team that only exists to crush the dreams of those of us naive enough to assume they’ll let the Packers do whatever they want. Vegas expects the lowest scoring total on the board for St. Louis, which gives us a higher floor to go along with a positive game script that should force Nick Foles to take to the air with his four-foot tall receivers.
Tier 2: NY Giants, Buffalo, Arizona, and Tennessee
The Giants are starting to become a trendy pick for people in the NFC East. Their pass rush could use a hand from Jason Pierre-Paul, but then again, so could he. That said, the 49ers keep gifting opposing D/STs. They’ve allowed 7, 11, 28, and 15 points to the murderer’s row of Minnesota, Pittsburgh, Arizona, and Green Bay, respectively. They’re the most generous team for opposing D/STs through four games, so I’m totally fine backing a mediocre Giants defense at home against them.
Buffalo is my favorite team on this tier though. They were my pick for the best D/ST in the preseason, and so far they’ve been very hot and cold. Two great weeks and two disappointing weeks leave them at 13th overall on the season. I expect some regression in their pass rush since they’ve only recorded seven sacks, and Tennessee should still be a great fade. The Bills still have enough rest of season value that I would start them over all the other Tier 2 defenses and probably Tampa Bay as well.
Arizona and Tennessee are solid choices, and the Titans in particular should be available in almost every league. We rarely back underdogs, but the Titans are at home in what should be a low-scoring game. The Bills are good, but they’re not so good that we can’t ever fade them. A word of caution though. Buffalo has conceded two scores of 10+ on the year and two scores of <2, so tread carefully with Tennessee. The Cardinals, for their part, are a bit of an enigma for the algorithm here. They were criminally under-projected for most of 2014 and the first few weeks of 2015, but they’ve also been very hot and cold themselves. With a good matchup against Detroit, they should be start worthy. However, like with most road matchups, their floor is going to be lower than a lot of people are going to be comfortable with.
Tier 2.5: Cincinnati, Atlanta, and Baltimore
Because Tampa Bay, NY Giants, and Tennessee should be available in most leagues, it’s going to be very easy to avoid dipping into this tier if you are interested. Each of these teams have flaws, and each of them have some very convincing arguments to start.
The Ravens are in a game with a low-scoring profile, but they’re also not very good (their secondary in particular), so they should struggle to capitalize. Atlanta just manhandled the Texans, but they also had 12 men on the field for most of the game with sleeper agent Derek Newton working for the dirty birds. Meanwhile, the Bengals have been pretty solid all year and get one of the league’s worst offensive lines at home, but count me in with the crowd expecting Andy Dalton to come back to earth.
True story; most people think Andy Dalton is soulless because he’s a ginger. He’s actually soulless because he’s from Katy, TX.
This tier is the most difficult one to assess since each of these teams have so many pluses and minuses.
Tier 3 and below: Philadelphia, Kansas City, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh
Friends don’t let friends start these defenses. Some of them should score well this week, because variance at the position is insane, but I would much rather be on almost any Tier 1/2 option instead.
Kansas City sticks out above the rest of these though, and their low ranking is rather curious. It could be a symptom of the smaller data set, but they also haven’t had many turnovers. If I were ranking these teams subjectively, I would put the Chiefs in Tier 2, and they can probably be started as if they were up there.
The rest of these options have too many question marks to risk as far as I’m concerned. Do note however that Houston/Indianapolis does not have a public line hung yet in Vegas, since we don’t know which QBs are starting for either team. I handicapped the game at Indianapolis -3.5 over/under 44 for the rankings, so check back later in the week to see if anything differs significantly. Otherwise, Houston’s defense isn’t good enough and Indy is on the road, so I’d stay away.
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Bye weeks are here, and it’s only going to get worse as we get deeper into the 2015 season. I hope your defenses have been kind to you. Streaming in general has been in rough waters thus far, but it’s a long season and we’re barely a quarter of the way through it.
Best of luck in Week 5!
