3 Fantasy Football Defensive Streaming Options for Week 7
I'm one of the 10 or so weirdos on the planet who has a passion for D/STs. In truth, it's a difficult passion to explain to people. Fantasy football is already a niche within a niche, and defensive streaming adds a couple of layers of obscure on top of that. Indeed, even a certain chunk of the fantasy football community is vehemently opposed to defensive streaming.
Whether you share my passion for the D/ST position, or you're gritting your teeth and bearing with your league's decision to keep the spot in spite of your repeated requests to the contrary, I'm here to help.
A few housekeeping matters: lines are courtesy of NFL odds, and roster percentages and scores are from the Yahoo! fantasy platform. Assume that the listed order is the preferred order. I'll try for defenses on 40% or fewer of Yahoo rosters.
Green Bay Packers
Vs. Washington Football Team
Spread: Packers -9.5
Roster Percentage: 65%
While I normally try to keep this to defenses to being under 40% rostered, I made an exception when they were on the list last week. My theory: many of those pick-ups were for the purpose of streaming, and there's no reason you can't turn right around and stream the Green Bay Packers this week. They're nearly double-digit favorites after all, and that's the number one thing we are targetting.
Green Bay remains a functional defensive unit at 12th allowing just 0.07 Adjusted Offensive Net Expected Points (NEP) allowed per play. James Bond approves.
As I mentioned last week, we got to see a glimpse of what happens when Taylor Heinicke plays with his hair on fire, and his 4.7 yards per attempt -- and a key interception -- left something to be desired. The one thing that Heinicke does do well is avoiding sacks, and that stayed true in Week 6 as the Old Dominion alum stayed clean on the day. Not to mention the Washington Football Team has an implied point total of just 19.50 in this game.
Our projections have the Lambeau Leapers as this week's sixth-best defense.
New Orleans Saints
At Seattle Seahawks
Spread: Saints -5.5
Roster Percentage: 40%
The New Orleans Saints are 6th in Adjusted Offensive NEP allowed per play, and they are playing a team with an implied point total of just 19.00 this week. This really is that simple sometimes.
Unlike Heinicke, Geno Smith does take a fair amount of sacks (8.3% career sack rate), and on top of that, Smith has a 3.9% career interception rate. Needless to say there's room for a lot of good things to happen for the Saints defense this week.
We forecast NOLA as the eighth-best D/ST of the week.
New York Giants
Vs. Carolina Panthers
Spread: Panthers -3.0
Roster Percentage: 2%
With my first two options being more highly rostered than normal, I thought I'd offer up a deeper cut with the third option. Unfortunately, that leaves us with a slight underdog in the New York Giants, but luckily, that underdog comes from what is likely to be a low-scoring, ugly game.
This selection really has more to do with Sam Darnold; Darnold, to paraphrase the late, great Dennis Green, is who we thought he was -- not very good. In spite of some early success, Darnold now sits at a 3.1% interception rate and a 7.4% sack rate. He's also dropped to just a cumulative 0.04 Passing NEP per drop back, and that mark is lower than greats like Heinicke and Daniel Jones.
We have the deep-cut G-Men as our 12th-best projected D/ST for the week.
