Football is back, baby! At this point most of our fantasy drafts are behind us, and it’s time to work on winning Week 1. This article is focused on one roster spot, often an afterthought, that can make or break a lineup: your defense. Each week I will provide defense (DST) scoring projections for every team, and give the rundown on my top picks to help with your waiver wire and start/sit questions.

• Waiver Wire Advice
• Weekly Fantasy Football Expert Rankings
• Fantasy Football Start/Sit Advice
• Fantasy Football Trade Tools

Streaming Defenses: Waiver Wire & Start/Sit Advice

What is streaming defenses?

In fantasy, streaming a position is fairly straightforward: pick up a player to start for just this week. For quarterbacks and tight ends, streaming is born out of necessity. Maybe Sam LaPorta is on bye, and you just need someone to fill in. Maybe you don’t have a good TE at all, and need to play matchups with a committee to scrape by. For defenses, streaming is plan A for the whole season.

Why is streaming defenses?

Streaming is a more viable strategy for defenses than for other positions. One of the main reasons is that, when it comes to predicting DST scoring, the offense is much more important than the defense.

Last season there were two defenses who scored more than 10 fantasy points per game on average: Dallas and Baltimore. If you had one of them you were set, but that’s only two teams. But there were six offenses that allowed more than 10 points to the opposing DST on average: Cleveland, New England, Washington, Carolina, and both New York teams. You would score more points starting whoever had one of those matchups each week than starting the #1 defense.

Even the best defenses are inconsistent. In weeks 1-17 last year, Dallas and Baltimore only finished among the top 12 defense 8 and 9 times respectively. The team with the most top-12 weeks was Cleveland with 10. If you want to have a defense that scores like a fantasy starter each week, you have to play matchups.

How is streaming defenses?

Fantasy points for defenses primarily come from sacks, turnovers and points allowed. My recommendations are projection-driven, and those projections are guided by some key observations about those three stats:

• Sacks are the offense’s fault, from a statistical perspective. We all love a good pass rush, but sacks happen when the QB holds the ball long enough for the pass rush to get home (perhaps because nobody can get open). Or the offensive line crumbles too quickly. A quarterback’s tendency to take sacks is one of the most reliable predictors of a good DST performance.
• Turnovers are the offense’s fault too, and are highly correlated with how often the offense throws rather than rushing. This is kind of obvious for interceptions – they only happen on passes, and are usually a mistake by the QB. A majority of fumbles happen on passing plays too: roughly half of fumbles happen on sacks, and receivers fumble after the catch at a higher rate than running backs – running backs with poor ball security tend not to keep their jobs for very long.
  • Defensive touchdowns, of course, only happen after turnovers. So offenses that pass often and have a tendency towards sacks and interceptions also offer the touchdown highest upside.
• Vegas is the absolute best source for projected points allowed. For every game, sportsbooks offer lines for total points (for both teams) and the spread (AKA margin of victory). We can combine these two data points to get the sharpest team score projections around. If you can reliably predict team scores better than the sportsbooks, well, it’s time to retire.

Week 1 D/ST Projections

Now for the main event. Streaming defenses is “easy” early in the season in that we don’t have to contend bye weeks. However the uncertainty about which offense are the best targets is at an all-time high. You can find me on Twitter.

Matchups

1. NO vs CAR: I think we would all love to see Bryce Young take a step forward this year, but the reality is that he has been an excellent defense target so far in his young career, and will continue to be until proven otherwise. Last year Bryce Young was second in the league for sacks taken with 62 – Sam Howell was the only other QB to take more than 50. The bad news is that Young cleaned up his interceptions in the back half of last year, throwing just 3 in the last 8 weeks of the season.
2. MIN @ NYG: Daniel Jones has been a mainstay of these articles for his entire career. He was kind of a disaster in the first 5 weeks of last season, before missing the rest of the year with an injury. Expectations are low for him this year, with some promising signs like interceptions in the preseason. Even when he’s playing his best, Jones is heavily prone to sacks and turnovers.
3. CIN vs NE: The Patriots have really not been able to figure out their quarterback situation since the departure of Tom Brady. Their current QB is Jacoby Brisset. Brissett is one of the better backup QBs in the league, but he is just that – a backup. Brisset has decent ball security so we might not see quite as much turnover upside as other good matchup, but extremely low scoring expectations should provide a solid floor. This will be New England’s first season in a long time without Bill Belichick, and I think they will be in rebuilding mode for a while.
4. SEA vs DEN: Speaking of rebuilding, it’s Bo Nix time in Denver. The Broncos were an excellent DST target last year with Russell Wilson, and I expect them to be an even better target, at least to start, with a rookie at the helm. Rookie QBs are always fantasy defense targets until proven otherwise, and Nix’s modest draft pedigree doesn’t really give me any doubts about that.
5. ATL vs PIT: Russell Wilson spent his career playing superman, getting chased around the backfield by pass rushers for days before making amazing deep passes. But those days are behind him. Wilson doesn’t have the speed to play hero any more, which makes his inclination to hold the ball a liability. Last year in Denver we saw some flashes of brilliance when he had the discipline to get rid of the ball quickly, but it wasn’t enough to keep the starting job in that offense. Wilson gets a fresh start in Pittsburgh this year. I would love to see a nice comeback, but I will absolutely be targeting him with defenses until that happens.
6. CHI vs TEN: As a rookie, Will Levis was a very good defense target with a particular penchant for sacks. In his 8 starts last year, he took over 3.3 sacks per game. The Titans have made some upgrades to the supporting cast, but it remains to be seen if that’s enough to turn this into a real offense.
7. LAC vs LV: Gardner Minshew is the starter in Las Vegas for now, but his job security is low with Aidan O’Connell waiting in the wings if Minshew doesn’t have a strong start. Minshew was mediocre as the Plan B starter in Indianapolis last year after Anthony Richardson had a season-ending injury.
8. DAL @ CLE: I’m a big believer in playing matchups with even pretty bad defenses. But for a good defense like Dallas, there are a lot of good matchups. DeShaun Watson wasn’t particularly good in his limited playing time last year. I think it’s unlikely that we ever see a return to the superstar-level play we saw in Houston early in Watson’s career, and I think it’s especially unlikely this week against Dallas.
9. TB vs WAS: Just like Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels is a rookie and therefore a D/ST target until proven otherwise. Unlike Nix, Daniels comes into this season with very high expectations. Last year Washington seemed to have a solid roster that just needed a good QB. Daniels might be that guy, but even the best quarterbacks take some time to find their groove. This is an upside play that should be available in most leagues.
10. SF vs NYJ: Aaron Rodgers has been through a lot since his hall-of-fame level tenure in Green Bay, having gone down for the season at the very beginning of last year. It is certainly possible that he plays like his old self, and with an incredible roster around him that could make the Jets a force to be reckoned with. But there are few colder welcomes back to the league than the 49ers defense. I would be extremely surprised to see Rodgers back to form this week.