Defense Wins Championships (Week 6)

The Titans D/ST is the latest to get to face the Browns

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 toughest decision when it comes to D/STs tends not to be who to start each week – yes, sometimes a decision will seem close on Saturday and then appear to be obvious on the following Monday. But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s the expectation that we care about, not the results. So while the Bills came out of Week 5 with 20 points and the Rams came out of it with just 3 points, the edge of Buffalo over Los Angeles according to our expectation was actually -0.2 points, or close enough to be a coin flip.

Recall the concept of Expected Value from last week. If you flip 100 coins, you can expect 50 of them to be Heads and 50 to be Tails. Some sets of trials will come out exactly 50/50, but some could be as extreme as 20/80 (or more!). The choice of Buffalo or Los Angeles looked like a coin flip, and like a coin flip, our guess was going to be either right or wrong – but the result will never change the odds of the flip itself.

Our situation is slightly more complicated, because instead of a coin flip, it’s actually more like a weighted die; but we can only guess how it is weighted based on the previous rolls we have seen. So if choosing the right starter tends not to be the tough part, what on earth could be?

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Bye weeks

Bye weeks can be hell on a D/ST owner. Streamers have it easy: without the initial investment, you have no attachment, and without the future promise of value, you have nothing to hang on to. Some bye weeks, like Minnesota this week, are easy. They won’t all be so easy though. Philadelphia and Green Bay were both on bye in Week 4. Both were fine (or better!) in Weeks 1 through 3, and both should be decent going forward. Should you have dropped them or held them through their bye? The question came up again last week with Kansas City and Seattle.

I tend to take a very aggressive stance on dropping D/STs, mostly because the leagues I play in tend to be too competitive to be wasting an early bench spot on a second defense. For example, in one league of mine this past week, I had to manage a bench with Charles Sims, Stefon Diggs, Corey Coleman, and Donte Moncrief, as well as bye weeks for Doug Baldwin and Willie Snead. There would have been no room for a second D/ST. If I had the Seahawks D/ST on that roster and no bye weeks to worry about, they could have been kept without too much pain… but that tends not to be the case in my own experience, and in that specific league I would have dropped them. As with any decision regarding waivers, your own league texture will ultimately decide your ideal strategy.

Today, there are only a handful of D/STs that can be held through a bye in standard leagues (and note, this could be subject to change in a hurry):

For sure, we have Minnesota and Denver. There is a possibility that we have Arizona and Buffalo in the mix as well, and both are probably a small step ahead of New England. That is literally the entire list, thanks in part to Green Bay, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Kansas City all having passed their bye weeks. Any other D/ST can be dropped in most leagues when they get to their bye week, and teams that have passed their bye week should be given a small bit of extra consideration when it comes time to stream them.

Overall, D/STs in Week 5 were pretty normal, averaging 7.3 points per game across all 14 games. Our Defense Wins Championships rank correlation for the week was 0.311 compared to 0.267 for FantasyPros ECR. They have remained close throughout the season.

Week 6 D/ST Scoring (Team, expected points – tier) – all scoring assumes MFL Standard, from www.myfantasyleague.com.

1. Arizona Cardinals, 11.5 – Tier 1 (vs NYJ)
2. Buffalo Bills, 11.3 – Tier 1 (vs SF)
3. New England Patriots, 10.3 – Tier 1 (vs CIN)
4. Seattle Seahawks, 9.9 – Tier 1 (vs ATL)
5. Oakland Raiders, 9.6 – Tier 2 (vs KC)
6. Denver Broncos, 9.3 – Tier 2 (at SD)
7. Houston Texans, 9.3 – Tier 2 (vs IND)
8. Tennessee Titans, 9.1 – Tier 2 (vs CLE)
9. Green Bay Packers, 8.8 – Tier 3 (vs DAL)
10. Washington Redskins, 8.7 – Tier 3 (vs PHI)
11. Pittsburgh Steelers, 8.6 – Tier 3 (at MIA)
12. Detroit Lions, 8.5 – Tier 3 (vs LA)
13. Philadelphia Eagles, 8.3 – Tier 3 (at WAS)
14. San Diego Chargers, 8.2 – Tier 3 (vs DEN)
15. Chicago Bears, 7.8 – Tier 4 (vs JAX)
16. Kansas City Chiefs, 7.8 – Tier 4 (at OAK)

Also on tier 4 this week are Los Angeles (7.8)

On bye this week are Minnesota and Tampa Bay. The Bucs can obviously be dropped and the Vikings obviously cannot. As of right now, the only other undroppable D/ST is Denver. Buffalo and Arizona could easily be there too once their byes roll around. Everything else is worth consideration, at the very least.

Tier 1 – Arizona, Buffalo, New England, Seattle

Arizona turned in their most impressive game of the season last week, even if their 16-point game was not quite their highest scoring of the season. They lit up the 49ers, conceding just 135 yards through the air, notching seven sacks, and forcing three turnovers. They allowed three long TD drives – 10 plays for 87 yards, 11 plays for 82 yards, and 13 plays for 75 yards – and shut down the 49ers in basically every other drive. Their other possessions were 33 plays for 69 yards. Nice.

This week, the Cardinals get a home game against the New York Jets. What’s the No. 1 matchup through 5 weeks for D/STs? The Jets. Which team has the first QB to throw 10 interceptions this year? The Jets. Which is the only team to concede a 30 point D/ST score on the season? The Jets. Start the Cardinals with confidence. Regardless of the results, you won’t get many games this good on paper all year long.

Buffalo erased what little doubt remained about them as a good D/ST on Sunday with a thorough defensive smashing of the Rams. To be fair, the Rams offense has looked better since their own Week 1 tilt, but playing at home, we expected something a little more from LA. Buffalo got to Keenum four times, forced three turnovers, and they even pitched in a D/ST TD to boost them from a would-be fourth best score to the top scoring D/ST in Week 5.

With the Bills getting San Francisco now and Miami next, you can consider them past the ranks of streamers for now. Week 8 vs New England will be their next major test, and we will want the extra two weeks of data before deciding whether to keep them through the bye or drop the Bills at that point. For now, though, enjoy your found money.

Speaking of New England, they clock in amongst the top tier once again. They’ve followed through more often than not. They were tier 1 in Week 2 and Week 5 (9.5 point average), and they were tier 2 in Week 3 and Week 4 (12 point average). Weeks 2 through 5 have them at 10.75 points per game and about +1 point per game above where we expect streamers to be. On paper, their matchup versus Cincinnati is mixed. However, the Bengals have conceded strong scores in four of five weeks, and the Patriots are good enough to take advantage. After all, this is the same team that gave up seven sacks against the Jets in Week 1! Like the Bills, enjoy the Patriots while you can – next week is on the road in Pittsburgh, and that is about as hard of a sell as any for a D/ST. Buffalo should be universally owned after waivers this week.

The final tier 1 D/ST this week is Seattle. Most people with the Seahawks did not drop them during their bye week, which was a reasonable choice. The reward is a game, thankfully at home, against one of the top offenses in the game through 5 weeks. The play here is simple: If you kept the Seahawks on your roster through their bye, you’re almost obligated to start them this week. Carrying 2 D/STs is rough for one week, let alone two, and if you’re sitting Seattle now, what happens next week in Arizona? Or the week after in New Orleans? Or two weeks after that in New England? Their schedule is about to get really, really tough.

Thankfully, the Seahawks are a good enough defense to weather that storm, but there will likely be some dud games mixed in. Their pass rush has been fine, but they will need to step up their game a little bit in forcing turnovers to turn a profit.

Tier 2 – Oakland, Denver, Tennessee, Houston

While tier 1 has zero streamers, tier 2 has multiple.

The Raiders are clearly a team on the rise. However, tread carefully with them on this tier. They are at home and slight favorites (though only -1 at the time of publication, so virtually a coin flip), and they have some very good players on their defense. The Chiefs have also been in the middle of the pack as far as matchups go, so they’re not a team to be afraid of. All that said, the Raiders are getting a huge boost from their abnormally large number of turnovers, and I’m afraid that they’re being bumped up a couple of points because of it. They should be a good play, but I would not be dropping anything of value to stream them. They do make a fine streamer though and are available in almost 70% of leagues.

Denver stands out on this tier as a plug-and-play D/ST still and are still too good to sit or drop. The matchup is not the best, but Rivers is still a somewhat turnover-prone QB and the Chargers are still mediocre.

The Texans are fourth on this tier but probably the most interesting. Most competitive leagues probably saw them dropped this past week in advance of their horrible matchup, and after losing J.J. Watt. In this column, we advised to treat them as a streaming D/ST going forward, meaning to give them consideration A) at home, B) against bad offenses, and/or C) when favored. In Week 6, we can check each of these boxes. The Colts are no longer to be feared, at least until they start playing better. They’ve allowed scores of 6 to Chicago and 13 to San Diego, along with a huge 25 point game to Denver and a solid 9 to Jacksonville. Houston is next in line, and can expect a strong 8-to-9 point outing with upside from there.

Behind the Raiders this week, or perhaps on relatively equal footing, are the Tennessee Titans. Their good game last week is giving them some amount of added boost here, most notably due to their six sacks of Ryan Tannehill. But the most important thing they’ve shown is that they’re not hapless, and the Browns certainly are. Cleveland is averaging more than 10 points per game to opposing D/STs, and in MFL scoring have allowed either 11 or 10 points in every single week thus far. Temper expectations slightly, but the Titans are my favorite streaming option of the week in this tier, and are virtually 100% available in 12-team leagues.

Tier 3 – Green Bay, Washington, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Philadelphia, San Diego

Some of these teams deserve more consideration than the others.

Green Bay and Philadelphia are both past their bye weeks, they are both in decent (though not great) spots this week, and both have been solid D/STs thus far in 2016. Both teams would be candidates to drop going into their bye weeks, but having passed it in each case, can be considered a slight tick above the general streaming options more often than not. For example, in Week 6, I would not drop either team to stream Tennessee or Oakland (though I would drop both teams for Buffalo). Consequently, I would treat both teams as being the top options on this third tier, even if the algorithm does not quite agree. Remember, we are splitting hairs to begin with when ranking among a tier, and the differences between Green Bay at the top and San Diego at the bottom are about half a point.

Outside of an obviously avoidable situation against Pittsburgh in Week 1, Washington has been relatively good since. They have a winnable matchup at home against Philadelphia, and I would consider them as the next best option on this tier, and the next best streaming option after Tennessee, Houston, Oakland, and perhaps Pittsburgh. However, consider that nearly 1/3 of their total scoring has come on the backs of turnovers, and prior to this past weekend against the Lions, the Eagles had not conceded a single turnover.

The Steelers round out this tier with a very good matchup against the Dolphins. Ryan Tannehill still has a chance to be decent, but it sure won’t be with his current offensive line, and it very likely will not be in 2016. The Dolphins are now the 7th best matchup for opposing D/STs through 5 weeks, and have conceded at least 9 points in every game. The Steelers have the capacity to get ahead early, stay ahead all game, and dial up their pass rush relentlessly.

San Diego and Detroit both have as many pluses as they do minuses and can probably be avoided in most formats.

That leaves the best streaming options this week as Buffalo (where available), Tennessee, Houston, Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Washington. I would treat Buffalo as its own tier, Tennessee and Houston as a second tier, and Oakland, Pittsburgh, and Washington as a third tier.

Best of luck in Week 6!

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