All 2010 Fantasy Football Articles | 2010 Position Rankings
Very few defenses are elite year to year, and performance can be tough to predict. One way to approach the position is to form a committee of two (or more) defenses that have favorable combined schedules but are being drafted in much later rounds than the so-called elite defenses. The idea is that a mediocre defense with a great matchup will provide approximately the same production as a great defense with a mediocre or bad matchup.
Clayton Gray of Footballguys.com does an excellent job of compiling the strength of schedule data, and he even writes his own DTBC column (though he calls it ‘TDBC’). However, I like to go a step further and add the impact of home and away games, as middling defenses have a tendency to score more fantasy points at home.
Last year, my top recommended combination was Green Bay and Dallas, which turned out well as both teams turned out to have Top 10 fantasy defenses. While I would have been better off just running the Packers out there every week, the duo’s recommended schedule netted 135 points (under a high performance scoring system), which were DT5-type numbers. My alternate recommendation, GB/ARI, netted 142 points, so DTBC does work.
Here’s how I identify the top DTBC combinations:
1. Use FBG’s SOS for DT9-DT28 along with David Dodds’ defensive projections to produce a week-by-week estimate for each defense.
I eliminated NYJ, MIN, GB, PHI, BAL, PIT, DAL and SF from the study because all eight defenses are being drafted by the 12th round, which is just too early to start a DTBC. Please note that I don’t use Dodds’ fantasy point projections, just the projections for points allowed, sacks, interceptions, fumbles and touchdowns scored. So the point totals won’t look the same.
2. Apply home/away adjustment.
With relation to a team’s mean performance, I found that middling defenses (DT6-DT25) scored 2.8% higher at home in 2009 and 8.6% higher in 2008. I took the average (5.7%) and applied a bonus to home games and a handicap to away games. The more home games, the better.
3. Run the numbers for the resulting 190 possible combinations to find the best DTBCs.
I also calculated the playoff averages for Weeks 14-16 (and just Weeks 15 & 16 for a two-week playoff system) as a tiebreaker.
So now I’m armed with a list of 190 possibilities sorted by total projected points. But numbers aren’t enough. I want a real-world perspective on this list. So I enlist the help of our NFL guru, Anthony Stalter, to give his thoughts on the defenses in question. After some discussion, we narrow the list of the best candidates to eight teams: SD, NO, NYG, CIN, MIA, CHI, NE and IND. When picking our DTBC, we shouldn’t stray from these eight teams.
Here are Anthony’s rankings along with his thoughts on each defense:
