The quarterback is the most highly visible player on a football team, but that doesn’t mean that theirs is the only important position. Watching how your daily fantasy football team performs will underscore this. The quarterback might be the one calling the plays, but they need talented players to help them move the ball down the field if they are going to win. The running back, the wide receiver, and the tight end are also vital to a team’s offensive success.
This, however, doesn’t mean that the defensive or special teams players do not hold value. Teams cannot win without strong defenses, but this is one of the most overlooked portions of fantasy football. True, this side of things doesn’t carry the same appeal that a 300+ yard passing game has from a QB, but drafting a strong defense is an easy way to pad out your roster and score a few easy points that your competition is missing out on. We will be taking a look at defense, and how you can get a top rated defense to help your daily fantasy team out and gain a little edge over the others in your league.
Like with any other daily fantasy sports league, the place to start is by looking at the statistics that will benefit you the most. It’s always good to look at these just in case the way that teams are ranked does not weigh stats quite as heavily as they should when pricing out their salaries. On DraftKings, for example, teams are rewarded more heavily for allowing fewer points. On FanDuel, the scoring for this portion of defense/special teams is identical. Both sites begin punishing you once a defense gives up 28 or more points. This makes focusing on teams that have low points against per game averages a priority. Last year, the Seattle Seahawks led in this category with an average of 15.9 points given up per game. It would have only earned you a single point on average each week you used them, but on some weeks you would have earned far more. In Week #8 last year, the Seahawks finally hit their groove. They gave up 9 points that weekend to the Carolina Panthers. Then, in Weeks #12 and #13, they only gave up 3 points each.
Highlighting your attention to games like these is easy when it’s done months later, but having a way to predict when something like this becomes more likely to occur will help you to figure out which teams to draft for your defense. One way to look at it is to focus on the strength of an offense. Last year, the competition in Week #12 was the Arizona Cardinals. They had a stronger record than Seattle at this point in the season (9-1, compared to Seattle’s 6-4), but Seattle had something that Arizona did not in this game. Arizona had faced weaker competition up to this point, they had a weaker quarterback in Drew Stanton, and Seattle was just plain fed up with poor results after winning the Super Bowl the year before.
Here’s the tricky part. QB Stanton had had a record game for him the weekend before against the Detroit Lions. He had 306 yards passing, and was starting to show signs of stepping up to the next level. And the Lions were a very strong team last year defensively! What was the difference between these two occurrences? One line of reasoning is that Stanton had WR Larry Fitzgerald against the Lions, but not against the Seahawks. This was the weekend that he went down with an injury, and it hurt the Cardinals far more than expected. Because Stanton was a new and not yet highly skilled QB, losing his star hurt his performance, and also his team’s. It opened up a lot of holes for Seattle to take advantage of, and Stanton didn’t have the same target opportunities that he had the week before. It ended up losing them the game, and it gave Seattle’s already strong defense an opportunity to run amok over Arizona.
Now, consider the fact that Seattle’s QB, Russell Wilson, was sacked 7 times in this game. That helped Arizona score a lot of fantasy points as a sack is worth +1 point. However, holding the Cardinals to only 3 points secured the Seahawks that same +7 points, but opened up areas for point scoring in other places. This type of focus helps you to increase the efficiency of your points and score in many areas, not just on sacks.
Focusing on opportunities like the one created above will help you to pick the best defense/special teams unit for your daily fantasy football roster. Look at what scores the most points, and then spend a few minutes seeing which teams will help you the most. You don’t want to spend a lot of money here, but getting a top quality team at a low price will not only save you money for other slots, but it will give you a few bonus points here and there.
