Can one simple trick earn your Fantasy Defense an extra point?
Yeah, you know it’s not exactly like that. But a little bit.
If you’ve been here all off-season, you know I’ve written quite a bit about fantasy defenses already this year:
- Team Defense Scoring Trends
- Fantasy Defense Scoring: Does Base Alignment Matter?
- Fantasy Defense Scoring: Coaching Changes
- Fantasy Defense Scoring: The History of This Year’s Coaches
- Fantasy Defense Scoring: The Impact of Changing Head Coaches
- Will the Draft Help a Team’s Fantasy Defense?
You might want to take a look at some of those. But for the purposes of this article, I want to repeat a few basic points:
I’m only looking at Tm Defensive (Tm D) fantasy scoring in these studies, NOT defense AND special teams (D/ST) scoring.
Fantasy scoring for Tm Ds varies widely from league to league. I’m going to use a modified version of the National Football Fantasy Championship (NFFC) scoring rules, excluding special teams points and doubling turnover FP from what NFFC uses. I’ve found more leagues award Tm Ds 2 FP for turnovers vs. the 1 FP in NFFC rules. Here’s the complete breakdown of the system I’m using:
- Interceptions = 2 FP
- Fumble Recoveries by the Defense = 2 FP
- Sacks = 1 FP
- Safeties = 2 FP
- Interception and Fumble Recovery Returns TDs = 6 FP
- 0 Points Allowed (PA) = 12 FP
- 2-7 PA = 8 FP
- 8-12 PA = 4 FP
- 13-17 PA = 2 FP (note NFFC scoring for PA may change for 2019)
All statistics in this study came from profootballreference.com’s invaluable Play Index.
Since 2002, the average Tm D has scored 8.0 FP per game. But If I separate that into games started by rookies vs. Veteran QB starts, I get this:
TM Ds score over a point more per game against rookie QB than vs. veteran signal-callers. That a nice little edge, right?
Of course, it’s not that simple. The NFL generally has a pretty good idea who is going to be a good QB and sorts them by draft pick:
Now we see a few things:
- Rookie QBs aren’t much worse at giving up Tm D FP than vets (about half a point).
- QBs taken in the 5th or later, or undrafted rookie free agents (all together in the 5+ bar) are really bad – get their opposing D.
- 2nd round QBs fare surprisingly poor compared to 3rd and 4th rounders (maybe 2nd round QBs are over-drafted?).
But – there’s always a but in these things. These are fairly small samples after the first round group (488 starts vs. 326 by all other rookie QBs since 2002). What happens if I take out one QB from column “3” and one from column “4:”
Now every rookie outside the 1st round is fat city for your Tm D. Who are these two mystery QBs? You probably can guess:
DP = Dak Prescott
RW = Russell Wilson
Turns out that there are decent QBs outside the first round (looking beyond 6’4″ specimens helps). Having a 1st Team All-Pro RB is also good for keeping your rookie QB from giving up a lot of FP. Or at least a good running game: Lamar Jackson didn’t have a star RB, but a good running game and his own legs kept the average by TM Ds he faced down to 5.6 FP last year. It’s anecdotal, but it looks like a mobile QB paired with a strong ground game is a good way to stay out of the rookie black hole of FP allowed to TM Ds. And maybe starts for your TM D that you should avoid.
One last chart, to keep those rookie 1st rounders from getting too big in the head:
I could make this appear more dramatic by playing with my scale, but 1st Round rookie QBs in the first half of the year “give up” 8.6 FP per game and cut it to 8.2 in the 2nd half.
Some takeaways for this year:
- You’ll get a slight edge playing your TM D vs. Kyler Murray, Daniel Jones and Dwayne Haskins, especially in the 1st half of the year.
- That edge will be mitigated to the extent that they have strong running games in David Johnson, Saquon Barkley and Adrian Peterson/Derrius Guice.
- Drew Lock looks like the guy to target with your streaming D (not to mention Joe Flacco).
- If another rookie gets plugged into a starting role through injury, start the Tm D he faces.
