The Seahwaks are returning to form and have two great matchups to end the fantasy season
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.
Jamaal Charles. Marshawn Lynch. Le’Veon Bell. Arian Foster. Mark Ingram. Dion Lewis. Justin Forsett. Carlos Hyde. No, that’s not a first round draft order for a 2015 draft at the RB position, it’s a list of names on IR, and after Week 14 we can add Thomas Rawls to the list.
In fact, the fantasy studs that disappointed in Week 14 could be found in almost every playoff matchup. For every monster performance from a guy like Odell Beckham,., there were two or three studs who fell flat: DeAndre Hopkins and Allen Robinson cracked 7 points each, which is more than you can say for perennial fantasy MVPs Dez Bryant and Calvin Johnson. Neither the young nor the old were exempt, and every position was seemingly snake-bitten. Owners disappointed by Jameis Winston’s’s weak showing against a historically bad defense need only look at the team who started Andy Dalton or Ben Roethlisberger for consolation.
But one position in Week 14 did show consistency, predictability, and a strong finish. While some number of duds are to be expected, D/STs this past weekend were remarkable. The lowest score of the top tier was Denver’s 7 in a bad matchup. Tier 2 did almost as well, bottoming out at Green Bay’s 8. And even in tier 3, where we stretched seven deep, only three teams – Tampa Bay (3 points), NY Giants (4) and Cincinnati (5) had truly bad games.
Averages by tier
1 & 1.5: 13.7
2 & 2.5: 11.3
3 & 3.5: 8.7
Overall, D/STs in Week 14 averaged 8.5 points – which means D/STs outside of the top 3 tiers averaged just 5.1 points – but also that the position averaged more points than a longer-than-usual list of RB1, WR1, and TE1s did. But as with every week, we trod ever onward.
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Week 15 D/ST Scoring (Team – Expected Value – Tier)
- New England Patriots – 11.5 – 1
- Seattle Seahawks – 11.3 – 1
- Kansas City Chiefs – 10.8 – 1
- Cincinnati Bengals – 10.5 – 1.5
- Pittsburgh Steelers – 10.0 – 1.5
- Carolina Panthers – 9.3 – 2
- New York Jets – 9.2 – 2
- Indianapolis Colts – 9.1 – 2
- St. Louis Rams – 9.0 – 2
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers – 8.5 – 2.5
- Arizona Cardinals – 8.5 – 2.5
- Houston Texans – 8.4 – 2.5
- Washington Redskins – 8.1 – 3
- Minnesota Vikings – 8.0 – 3
- Denver Broncos – 7.8 – 3.5
- Green Bay Packers – 7.8 – 3.5
Also on tier 3.5 are the Buffalo BIlls (7.6), New Orleans Saints (7.4), Jacksonville Jaguars (7.4), and Miami Dolphins (7.4).
Tier 1: New England, Seattle, Kansas City
New England is going to make a lot of people nervous this week, and for good reason. Although they’re coming off a 15 point game in Houston Sunday night, the Patriots have not been very good this season. Part of this deficiency is due solely to their lack of D/ST TDs, because they’ve been very good otherwise – 42 sacks, 10 interceptions, 7 fumble recoveries – and their lack of TDs is holding them back from the ranks of the elite. The top 8 D/STs have had a total of 26 defensive TDs between them, or more than 3 (and 19.5 fantasy points) per team. That’s the difference between where the Patriots are now (DST14) and where the Rams sit (DST8).
This week, the Patriots get a dream matchup: the Tennessee Titans at home. Last week, one of the big themes in the weekly discussion thread was how the Jets were projected too high, how the Titans and Mariota would shred them, and how they were going to be the big disappointment last week. Oops? My numbers certainly said otherwise, and they repeat the same trend this week. The Patriots are favored at home by a monster score of 14, leaving fewer than 17 points on the board for the Titans offense. Vegas spreads under 17 are correlated with the most elite of D/ST scores, and a Titans team that has gifted opposing D/STs with 10.5 points per game (including three 20-point games and eight 9+ point games) should be no different.
The Seattle Seahawks have been climbing in everybody’s power rankings, and for good reason. Was the collective too low on them after their slow start? Probably, given that their losses to Arizona, Green Bay, Cincinnati, and Carolina look like bad breaks against mostly very good teams. They now have five games of their last seven where they’ve allowed 13 points or fewer. They get the Browns at home, which should be all that needs to be said… but in case that’s not enough for you, remember the Browns are the second most generous team to D/STs with a shockingly high 12.1 points per game. That’s more than every D/ST has scored this season except for Denver and Carolina, and there’s no sign of it slowing down any time soon.
Rounding out the top tier is Kansas City, who have been on a tear every bit as impressive as the Seahawks have. Week 13 erased any doubt about them being a playoff stud, and Week 14 brought us one-third of the payoff against the hapless Chargers. Anybody who has the Chiefs on their roster shouldn’t have to think twice about this one. You start them. Period. Ten of their thirteen games have cracked double digits for the KC D/ST, with the only exceptions being games against Green Bay, Cincinnati, and Buffalo. For anybody keeping track at home, those are the 31st, 29th, and 25th ranked matchups for D/STs, and the Chiefs have destroyed everything else they’ve faced.
…anybody got a Scantron for Ryan Mallett? It might be time for his final exam, and with his NFL grades this season, he needs to ace it to keep a job going into next year. He should probably start working on his resume.
Tier 1.5: Cincinnati, Pittsburgh
Last week’s opponents round out this week’s top D/STs for very different reasons.
The Bengals are on the road and are starting A.J. McCarron, and while that would normally scare us away from any D/ST, the Bengals also get one of the best matchups in the league in San Francisco. Given that Cleveland sacked Blaine Gabbert nine times this past weekend, it wouldn’t surprise me to see the Bengals get 6 themselves. More fairly, a healthy total of 4 is to be expected, on top of the usual turnovers and a fairly depressed scoring total from Vegas. Let’s face it, we’re not going to be benching a top D/ST in a top matchup just because their QB went down, so unless you have a truly tier 1 option, the Bengals are full speed ahead.
Pittsburgh is a lot trickier. They’ve been a deceptively good defense this season, driven in part I’m sure by their killer offense. This week they’re at home and heavily favored against the Broncos, and though the scoring total is not as low as we would like, the Broncos’ QB showed some weaknesses against an Oakland pass rush last week that is merely OK. Osweiler looked uncomfortable in the pocket, he had multiple passes batted down, and he had a very difficult time in the second half, especially. I would personally rate the Steelers as tier 2, but there’s no denying that they make a strong start this weekend if you’re in a pinch.
Tier 2: Carolina, NY Jets, Indianapolis, St. Louis
It’s going to be hard to bench the Panthers. Most people won’t be able to, nor should they, but if you have one of the tier 1/1.5 options (and perhaps the Jets as well), I would highly recommend it. The Panthers will of course have a very high ceiling, but I suspect their scoring floor is lower than most people would be comfortable with. They’re playing on the road and the scoring total is a robust 48 points – that leaves approximately 23 points for the Giants to expect, which is a lot more like a D/ST ranked 16th than a D/ST ranked 6th.
It’s fitting that the Jets and the Rams are here on the tier together, since last week they received a similar amount of blowback for their highly projected expectations. All they did was score a total of 27 D/ST points, and they likely made a lot of timid owners (or former owners) very disappointed. Neither team has quite as good of a matchup as they did last week, but both are still viable fantasy starters in Week 15.
It should be no surprise with the Jets, since they have the league’s best matchup for D/STs, albeit on the road. The Dallas Cowboys have been a horrible football team, and there’s been talk in Texas of letting Oklahoma annex the entire Metroplex as punishment. Meanwhile, the NY Jets have been a lot better than people have given them credit for. They’ve suffered from the same problem the Patriots have – a lack of D/ST TDs – and coincidentally have the exact same D/ST score through 14 weeks. If this game were at home, it would be an obvious tier 1 play.
The Rams get a relatively poor matchup against Tampa Bay, which is contrary to everything we expected in the preseason. It’s a perfect illustration of why we cannot judge schedules or team quality too strictly until we get an adequate sample size for the current season. That said, Vegas expects a low scoring game, and the Rams are small home favorites. While the Jets could very easily be argued as being too low this week, the Rams seem about right.
And then we have the Colts. Now that Matt Hasselbeck might be on the shelf, I can start rooting against the Colts again. The Jaguars broke the Colts’ ludicrous 16-game AFC South winning streak, and now it’s time for the Texans to do something they’ve never done in their entire history: beat the Colts in Indianapolis. That’s right, the Texans didn’t even beat the Colts when they won 10 games and faced Dan Orlovsky. They didn’t beat the Colts the following year as a 12-win team against a rookie Andrew Luck.
The good guys probably won’t win, but we can all hope, right?
As for the Colts D/ST… I don’t like it. This is either going to be an ugly game where neither offense looks good, or it’s going to be an ugly team where neither defense looks good. The only certainty is that it should be an ugly game, and I’m not about to start a D/ST that just gave up 51 points if I can help it. Start at your own risk.
Tier 2.5: Tampa Bay, Arizona, Houston
See above for my thoughts on the Indy/Houston game. Houston is not good enough to start on the road if you can avoid it. Their offense is a liability, their defense is nowhere near as good as they get credit for, and I think most of us can do better. My algorithm has been sour on them all season long, and I’m not sure that it’s been unreasonable, given that they sit 21st overall in D/ST scoring.
Arizona is also a tough sell given that this game should be very high scoring. It’s got the highest Vegas total on the board, and both teams should get in on that action. This game would be a lot easier to like in Arizona, but in Philadelphia, the Cardinals are going to have a basement-level floor and a vaulted ceiling. If my playoff team were a scrappy underdog that shouldn’t be there, Arizona is the type of D/ST I’d want to have, but most playoff teams should stay away.
For the ultimate glutton for punishment, we have the Buccaneers at on the road on Thursday Night Football. You know you don’t want to, but you also might not have a choice. The Rams are a horrible offense, and the Bucs have been surprisingly competent on both sides of the ball. It’s a low scoring game. Can you stomach seeing that score on your scoreboard all day Friday and Saturday? If so, they make for an excellent option.
Tier 3 and below
Minnesota – a fine play in a pinch. Low over/under, a decent D/ST, and they’re at home against division rival Chicago. You could do a lot worse. If I were stuck without a tier 1 or tier 2 play, Minnesota is where I’d look first.
Denver – I think last week would have been the nail in the coffin for the Broncos, except now they get a much better matchup in Week 16 than we previously thought. I would look to bench the Broncos this weekend, but you’ll probably want to keep them up your sleeve for your championship game against the Bengals at home.
Most weeks, there are deep league options outside of the top 16 that appear viable. This week is not most weeks. San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Atlanta, NY Giants, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, and Tennessee are as unstartable as they come.
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To everybody still alive in their leagues, I wish you the best of luck. Playoffs are either well on their way or beginning this week, and our margins of error are virtually nonexistent. However, always remember: you win or lose your week as soon as your games kick off, not based on the score afterward. Make the right choices and you win. Make the wrong choices and you lose. Trying to win on the scoreboard with bad choices because you “have a feeling” or you want to “trust your gut” is a recipe for disaster, whether you get punished for it or not.
Thank you for reading, and I hope to see you back next week!
