It’s never too early to start streaming. Last year in this series I attempted to show why streaming defenses in fantasy football is the superior strategy. First, it requires almost no draft capital to take a D/ST outside the top 12 by ADP with a good Week 1 matchup. Second, it’s the highest-scoring method. As I pointed out last year, starting the Cowboys (D/ST1 overall at the time) each week yielded fewer points than blindly starting whatever defense was playing the Rams. Even that doesn’t represent the ceiling outcome, since you have the flexibility to target the absolute best matchup every single week. Last, streaming D/STs is likely to become a necessity at some point in the season anyway. No matter how glad you were to draft the 49ers’ defense in Round 9 (their actual ADP in ESPN leagues — one spot after Zay Flowers), you wouldn’t want to start them against the Chiefs, Bengals, or Bills. You may even be reading this article because you were understandably delighted to land the Jets D/ST in your draft and just realized they’re taking on Josh Allen and the Bills in Week 1.
How do we identify the best D/STs each week? With so many personnel, coaching, philosophy, and scheme changes since the last snap of 2022 football, there’s not much data to go on yet for 2023. D/ST scoring is driven by negative offensive plays (sacks, forced fumbles, interceptions, pick sixes) rather than by holding the opposing team to a low score. We’ll look at the best ways to predict those plays throughout the year, but at this point in the season the goal is targeting inexperience in all its forms on offense.
For the purposes of streaming, we’ll focus on D/STs with availability in as many leagues as possible. Recommending everyone start the Cowboys’ D/ST versus the Giants in Week 1 is good advice. But it’s not very useful advice since they’re only available in 5% of ESPN leagues. Before you read further: if you’re in one of the 23% of leagues where the Ravens D/ST is available, roster them immediately. Otherwise, let’s take a look at the best matchups of Week 1 for D/STs with a realistic shot of floating around on your waiver wire as we speak.
