DE question (1 Viewer)

Drafted in a Draft Experts (DE) league recently, which is when you draft a team and leave it, no pickups or drops, just draft 28 positions and the computer plays your best team for you. Anyway, one person only took one team D, and when the draft was over another owner said that by only drafting one D, they were ceding 80-100 points over the duration of the season plus taking a 0 one week. That math didn't work for me, does anyone agree or disagree with his statement and why?

Thank

JamieMurphy said:

Drafted in a Draft Experts (DE) league recently, which is when you draft a team and leave it, no pickups or drops, just draft 28 positions and the computer plays your best team for you. Anyway, one person only took one team D, and when the draft was over another owner said that by only drafting one D, they were ceding 80-100 points over the duration of the season plus taking a 0 one week. That math didn't work for me, does anyone agree or disagree with his statement and why?

Thank

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hard to disagree without knowing the settings but it seems like an overstated generalization. First, who did he take instead of a 2nd defense?  Second, yes he's taking a zero one week at defense (but again, you have to look at the playet he took instead of the 2nd defense).

As for the choice costs him 80-100 points on the season, maybe but that seems really high.  If we look at last year's top defense (chiefs) vs the 24th (titans), other than the bye week the 2nd defense would have added less than 10 points on the year.  Obviously that won't be that little for every pairing but I'm assuming he took a top defense. 

In general I'll agree that it's usually better to have a 2nd defense (and kicker fwiw) but it's definitely not a certainty.  

From my local, which is very vanilla defensive scoring, DEF5 and DEF6 in best ball resulted in 149 points last year.  DEF9 & 10 scored 138.  DEF1 & 2 scored 186.  DEF2 & 10 scored 171.  DEF10 & 17 scored 117

DEF12 scored 89.  DEF20 scored 68

His statement was overly generalized, because one can't assume what defense he has and what he passed, but it could easily hit that range.  Then again, DEF1 scored 125 by themselves and may outscore a bunch of combos.

This sounds like a "best ball" league. There's a thread just for those types of league. I think it's on the first page of the Shark Pool right now. "MFL10s and Best Ball" or something like that.

I agree with the other two that information is needed. If we go off of Fantasy Pros numbers from last year we can build a general discussion but it's not going to that accurate for a true or false discussion. And this defense discussion in best ball leagues is even a bigger mess because of the weekly and yearly variance in defences. 

For what it's worth, it think only taking 1 defense was a mistake. There's no kickers in MFL10s (the best ball leagues that I do) but those leagues are only 20 rounds. So even if everyone in your league takes 3 kickers that's still a 25 round draft. There's still some value in round 20 of MFL10s but nothing that you're expecting much from. So, to pass on a second defense, that you know will "start" for you at least one week, seems like a bad call. But if everyone went Def crazy in the 8th to 11th round, then I wouldn't fault the person for skipping a 2nd D (especially a garbage one) to take the value at other positions that was being left behind. 

In a best ball league that I ran the numbers on, not taking a 2nd defense would've cost you about 57 fantasy points on average (including the week where you took a 0). The exact number will depend on your league's scoring for defenses (and of course on which D you took, and which 2nd D you would've taken).

Yeah, ignoring the obvious ceding for byes, having only one defense in a bestball format is a lowkey disaster, its like a 3-5 PPG difference.

Thanks all for your responses, will look in at the Best Ball thread for more insights.

Without knowing the scoring, or if it's total points or H2H, it's really difficult to say much. But, I'm at the keyboard, so...

Since MFL10's was brought up, I took a look at last years's MFL10 D scoring. WIth 28 roster spots in your league, it's obvious that it's not an MFL10, so take this with a grain of salt.

I compared the top 2 D's (Chiefs & Vikings) for the year against 3 different combos 4 & 12 (Eagles & Dolphins), 9 & 10 (Cardinals & Chargers) and 11 & 12 (Buc's & Dolphins). The biggest delta was 4 & 12 over the Vikings by 45 points which could be significant in a winner-take-all like the MFL10's The smallest was 4 & 12 over the Chiefs by 10. Of course it's quite possible last year that somebody could have projected the Cardinals as a top D and picked them as their lone D, but they ended as the 9th scoring D with 47 less than the Chiefs and 20 less than the Vikings.

I didn't look at any of the teams finishing outside of the top 12, but you never know, you might get lucky with the complimentary scoring. Also, picking someone like a Jordan Howard very late instead of a 2nd D could have won the league for someone.

I'll be taking 2 D's, but if someone wants just 1, or 3 or more, no big deal. When I start winning at some significant rate above the norm, maybe I'll feel justified in passing judgement on others. But I won't. As we used to say when I played a lot of online poker, "Don't tap the glass."