3 Fantasy Football Defensive Streaming Options for Week 8
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.
Kansas City Chiefs
vs. New York Giants
Spread: Chiefs -10
Roster Percentage: 35%
One of the joys of D/ST streaming is that you don't have to play actual good defenses. In fact, you can play genuinely awful ones in the right matchup.
The Kansas City Chiefs, who are 31st in the league in Adjusted Defensive Net Expected Points (NEP) per play are such a defense, but making Daniel Jones play with his hair on fire is a decent bet to make. Despite the miserable Chiefs defense, the New York Giants have just a 21.25 implied point total.
Even if the Chiefs give up points and yardage, and they will, so what? You don't think "Danny Dimes" will make mistakes if he's forced to throw fifty times?
People will scoff at playing one of the league's worst defenses, but that's not really what D/ST streaming is about.
We project the Chiefs to be the fourth-best D/ST on the week.
Cincinnati Bengals
at New York Jets
Spread: Bengals -9.5
Roster Percentage: 18%
The Cincinnati Bengals are fresh off a 41-17 victory over the Baltimore Ravens and now face the far inferior New York Jets, who may well be down to backup quarterback Mike White. You should always be careful with the transitive property, but the message is clear enough. The Bengals are for real, and the Jets are utterly hapless.
The Bengals also have the league's fifth best defensive unit at 0.00 Adjusted Defensive NEP per play. Cincinnati's defense also has an above-average pressure rate as a unit.
We forecast Cincy as a lower end D/ST for now, but that's subject to change with added clarity under center for New York.
Atlanta Falcons
vs. Carolina Panthers
Spread: Panthers -3.0
Roster Percentage: 8%
My hail-Mary Giants selection panned out last week and the thesis was essentially to bet against Sam Darnold.
It's a bet I'm doubling down on. Atlanta's defense may have the speed to force Darnold into more mistakes. Their 1.23 yards before defensive contact is the seventh-best mark in the NFL; they are fast and swarm to the ball well.
This time, Darnold is an actual underdog and the Falcons are a top-10 projected D/ST per numberFire's model.
