Would you still draft defense in last round... (1 Viewer)

[SelenaCat]

I'm in a league that awards a fairly significant amount of points based on the scoring against them and penalizes you for poor defenses:

Shutout: 12 points

1-9 points allowed: 9 points

10-16 points allowed: 5 points

17-28 points allowed: 0 points

29-40 points allowed: -1 point

41+ points allowed: -4 points

There are no points given for yards allowed and otherwise scoring is similar to the FBG defaults.

The 9th-15th defenses all scored around 100 points for the year, and whereas the top two defenses (Steelers and Packers) both scored about 200 points for the year, making them about the 50th highest scorers in all positions.

That's a pretty significant point differential, and since points allowed is a much easier statistic to project, should I consider drafting a defense sooner than the last round (well, the round before I draft a kicker, anyhow)?

 

[Sylira21]

I definitely would. There's a pretty good spread in defenses for points allowed. That being said, it looks easier to project the good defenses than it is. Pittsburgh is always a good defense, but they are not dominant year in and year out, at least in points allowed - they werre 12th in 2009, although they were first in 2010 and 2008. Another one that is usually consistent is Baltimore, they've been top-5 for the last three years - but were 24th in 2007. Some teams swing wildly - Dallas was 2nd in 2009, 31st in 2010.

So I'd grab one of the consistently good teams a few rounds earlier than last, but I wouldn't reach for a team that wasn't proven. Of course, at that point in the draft you're usually on your 5th RB and 5th WR, so even a bust there is no going to kill yoy!

 

[jon_mx]

I would never wait that long for a defense. A 100 point differential between a top defense and a lowest tier DEF1 is huge. That is like getting Brandon Jacobs instead of Jamal Charles.

 

[ldizzle]

I'm in a league that awards a fairly significant amount of points based on the scoring against them and penalizes you for poor defenses:Shutout: 12 points1-9 points allowed: 9 points10-16 points allowed: 5 points 17-28 points allowed: 0 points 29-40 points allowed: -1 point 41+ points allowed: -4 points There are no points given for yards allowed and otherwise scoring is similar to the FBG defaults.The 9th-15th defenses all scored around 100 points for the year, and whereas the top two defenses (Steelers and Packers) both scored about 200 points for the year, making them about the 50th highest scorers in all positions. That's a pretty significant point differential, and since points allowed is a much easier statistic to project, should I consider drafting a defense sooner than the last round (well, the round before I draft a kicker, anyhow)?

The point system is all relative. I would think it would be tough to figure out which defense is going to be the top defense since it changes every year...

 

[Instinctive]

My league uses almost the exact same scoring tier there for points allowed...

The best defenses week in and week out are the ones that get an abnormal amount of turnovers, I have had success playing the WW for the teams against the most turnover prone QBs and the weakest run games to also get some PA points.

 

[shortbow]

Leagues im in the Defensive scoring has always been based on defensive plays (sacks, turn overs, fumble recoverys, special team returns) and points allowed.

Never have yards been involved at all.

Shutout: 20

1-6: 15

7-13: 10

14-17: 5

18-21: 1

22-27: -3

28-34: -5

35-45: -7

46+: -13

Unless you have the Steelers, pretty much no reason not to play the wire in this format.

 

[Dylan158]

As others mentioned it's near impossible to project what defenses are going to do. I had the steelers in a few leagues last year with a fairly similar scoring system, and from what i remember they had 2 weeks in wich they scored 30+ points because of turn overs and td's.

If you take out the top 2 scores of all teams i reckon the avg on a week to week base is much closer, they just had 2 incredible weeks.

 

[shortbow]

As others mentioned it's near impossible to project what defenses are going to do. I had the steelers in a few leagues last year with a fairly similar scoring system, and from what i remember they had 2 weeks in wich they scored 30+ points because of turn overs and td's. If you take out the top 2 scores of all teams i reckon the avg on a week to week base is much closer, they just had 2 incredible weeks.

I had the steelers in more than a few leagues last year because they werent ranked the #1 defense for some reason. They avgd something ridiculous like 18+ a week

 

[FantasyTrader]

My league's waiver/scoring systems always have a very big impact on my Team D plans at the draft.

 

[SelenaCat]

If you take out the top 2 scores of all teams i reckon the avg on a week to week base is much closer, they just had 2 incredible weeks.

Out of curiosity, I ran the math removing each team's top two scores. The rankings of the top 4 teams (Steelers, Packers, Pats, Bears) remained the same, with a little more variability in the 5-15 range (though there was only a difference of about 20 points for the remaining 14 games between the 5th and 15th teams). Their average PPG of the top teams were 10, 10, 9, 7.5. In comparison, the 12th team had 6.5 PPG. So no, I don't think it's just a couple of blow-out games.

 

[Short Corner]

Our league has always cored defenses this way and I Hhave never drafted a defense before the last two rounds. Too much variance and too easy to play match ups off the WW.

 

[Four Horsemen]

I agree with those that have already said how difficult it is to predict defensive team performance from one year to the next.

For example, last year the Jets were considered the overwhelming favorite to have the dominant defense in the league. I was seeing people I respect making the case that they should go as high as the 6th round.

They ended up finishing 6th in most standard scoring formats, in other words they were an average "starter" in a 12-team league. Certainly not a performace worth spending a premium pick. They finished with 7 more points that the Lions, which you probably could have got off the waiver wire the first four weeks of the season.

The good news is that Jets were among the better performers among 2010's preseason favorites. How could the 49ers fail? They had a great performance in 2009, were loaded with good young talent, and played in the weakest division in the NFL. But they turned out to be awful and finished 16th. The Vikings finished in 25th. The Saints were defending Super Bowl champions and were among the leaders in turnovers in 2009. They finished 23rd. The Bengals weren't considered at the level in last year's drafts but they were really good in 2009 and horrid in 2010. Meanwhile, the Raiders were considered flotsam going into 2010 and finished 3rd overall.

Go back and look at the preseason rankings the last few years. There's always at least one can't miss defense that is considered superior and worth taking early. And without fail, they miss.

The NFL is just too volatile from year to year to say in August that "such and such defense will dominate and is worth a premium draft pick."

 

[Dylan158]

Is my assumptiom that it takes down their avg more then the middle teams valid though? If that's the case it's not worth it to pick a D in say the tenth round over waiting, especially when considering playing match ups and picking up d's from the waiver wire might be almost equally as succesfull.

Imo d/st points are hardest to predict since there are a lot of variables involved and the variance on a year to year base is much higher then with other players.

 

[gsmayes]

I don't like that scoring range, a shut out (very rare) is only worth three more points than allowing a TD? We use:

Points allowed

0: 10 pts

1-6: 6 pts

7-13: 4 pts

14-20: 2 pts

Yards allowed

0-99: 10 pts

100-149: 6 pts

150-199: 4 pts

200-249: 2 pts

I certainly wouldn't draft defense before about round 10, but definitely before the last two rounds. Sure, if you draft a defense earlier you could end up with a bust, just like every other position. But if you wait until late you're guaranteed garbage, and having an elite defense can easily win you a game or two through the course of the season. You also don't have to waste roster space platooning defenses for matchups.

 

[FantasyTrader]

Go back and look at the preseason rankings the last few years. There's always at least one can't miss defense that is considered superior and worth taking early. And without fail, they miss.

You're playing that game with every draft pick though. By that reasoning, there's always at least one can't miss RB that is considered superior...and they miss. Do you not take RB's in the first round? I hear what people are saying, that there's a high level of variance among team D's every year. But I'd bet that (speaking strictly from a position of expected value), the top 5 defenses drafted every year outscore the 10th-15th D's drafted by a significant margin. Beyond that though, there's another huge reason I rarely ever take a defense any later than the third to last round I think many people are overlooking. I generally like to take some big risks with my RB6-7 and WR6-7 and often those risks involve me going so far outside of the box when it comes to ADP that it's extremely unlikely that player gets drafted unless I'm the team drafting him.

So, think about that in the context of draft strategy. What's the one reason you'd wait and draft a middle-of-the-road D in the 19th round than a top 6-7 D in the 16th round? The answer is obviously that your guy in the 16th won't be there in the 19th. But in my case, I'm usually going so deep into the well with my bottom rung RB or WR there's very little chance of that. May as well draft a top 7 Team D prospect because I know that one of the 2-3 deep, deep sleepers I've targeted late will be there regardless.

 

[Four Horsemen]

Go back and look at the preseason rankings the last few years. There's always at least one can't miss defense that is considered superior and worth taking early. And without fail, they miss.

You're playing that game with every draft pick though. By that reasoning, there's always at least one can't miss RB that is considered superior...and they miss. Do you not take RB's in the first round? I hear what people are saying, that there's a high level of variance among team D's every year. But I'd bet that (speaking strictly from a position of expected value), the top 5 defenses drafted every year outscore the 10th-15th D's drafted by a significant margin. Beyond that though, there's another huge reason I rarely ever take a defense any later than the third to last round I think many people are overlooking. I generally like to take some big risks with my RB6-7 and WR6-7 and often those risks involve me going so far outside of the box when it comes to ADP that it's extremely unlikely that player gets drafted unless I'm the team drafting him.

So, think about that in the context of draft strategy. What's the one reason you'd wait and draft a middle-of-the-road D in the 19th round than a top 6-7 D in the 16th round? The answer is obviously that your guy in the 16th won't be there in the 19th. But in my case, I'm usually going so deep into the well with my bottom rung RB or WR there's very little chance of that. May as well draft a top 7 Team D prospect because I know that one of the 2-3 deep, deep sleepers I've targeted late will be there regardless.

Because of the variance I discussed earlier. Yes, there's variance among the other positions, too. But it's not nearly as great as it is drafting a defense or kicker.

The top 5 defenses not only do not significantly outscore the top defenses drafted 10-15 but often times they don't even score as well.

 

[jon_mx]

I've started out 1-3 instead of 4-0 one year because I got outscored by defense every week. I tend to try to get one of the better ones now.

 

[FantasyTrader]

Because of the variance I discussed earlier. Yes, there's variance among the other positions, too. But it's not nearly as great as it is drafting a defense or kicker.The top 5 defenses not only do not significantly outscore the top defenses drafted 10-15 but often times they don't even score as well.

I think you might be making some assumptions here and stating them as fact. I say MIGHT, because honestly I don't know the real answer and don't have the numbers in front of me. But it's a commonly known fact that, in general, 5 of top 10 RB's from any one year to the next will be turned over. So variance is incredibly high regardless of the position in FF. I'd have a hard time believing those numbers for RB are any less than the top 10 defenses from year to year without seeing a few years of data. Also, I have a hunch (again, nothing to prove this other than my gut) that you're wrong about middle-of-the-road defenses often outscoring the top 5 defenses drafted. I'd also need to see several years of data on that before I believed it as fact.

 

[jon_mx]

Defenses are a bit tricky though, because some defenses like Detroit really was not one of the better defenses in the league, but because they get quite a few sacks they were a pretty good fantasy defense. Turnovers are hard to predict as well as DTD or Special Team TD's. I think there is more variation in defensive scoring than other positions. But still, I think I could pick 3 or 4 teams that will almost certainly finish a top 7 fantasy scorer.

 

[SelenaCat]

The problem with the conventional wisdom is that most people are ignoring that the points allowed can account for well over half of a good team's scoring each week. Yes, it's still not entirely predictable, but it's significantly better than the crapshoot you get without that additional scoring system. This means you can have at least a rough idea how each team will perform and there's certainly incentive to take one of the better teams. In this case, I do think taking a D a round or two earlier can be beneficial, especially since you're in the prospect/flyer rounds then anyhow.

 

[Four Horsemen]

Because of the variance I discussed earlier. Yes, there's variance among the other positions, too. But it's not nearly as great as it is drafting a defense or kicker.The top 5 defenses not only do not significantly outscore the top defenses drafted 10-15 but often times they don't even score as well.

I think you might be making some assumptions here and stating them as fact. I say MIGHT, because honestly I don't know the real answer and don't have the numbers in front of me. But it's a commonly known fact that, in general, 5 of top 10 RB's from any one year to the next will be turned over. So variance is incredibly high regardless of the position in FF. I'd have a hard time believing those numbers for RB are any less than the top 10 defenses from year to year without seeing a few years of data. Also, I have a hunch (again, nothing to prove this other than my gut) that you're wrong about middle-of-the-road defenses often outscoring the top 5 defenses drafted. I'd also need to see several years of data on that before I believed it as fact.

No, actually if you look at my post I quoted last year's stated.

 

[FantasyTrader]

Because of the variance I discussed earlier. Yes, there's variance among the other positions, too. But it's not nearly as great as it is drafting a defense or kicker.

The top 5 defenses not only do not significantly outscore the top defenses drafted 10-15 but often times they don't even score as well.

I think you might be making some assumptions here and stating them as fact. I say MIGHT, because honestly I don't know the real answer and don't have the numbers in front of me. But it's a commonly known fact that, in general, 5 of top 10 RB's from any one year to the next will be turned over. So variance is incredibly high regardless of the position in FF. I'd have a hard time believing those numbers for RB are any less than the top 10 defenses from year to year without seeing a few years of data. Also, I have a hunch (again, nothing to prove this other than my gut) that you're wrong about middle-of-the-road defenses often outscoring the top 5 defenses drafted. I'd also need to see several years of data on that before I believed it as fact.

No, actually if you look at my post I quoted last year's stated.

Right I saw that. Where you gave examples of last year some highly ranked D's that failed to live up to expectations and some D's that were considered poor finish in the top 10. Is that what you're using to make the statement:"The top 5 defenses not only do not significantly outscore the top defenses drafted 10-15 but often times they don't even score as well."

If it is, that's an incredible leap to make off of a few examples from last year.