Fantasy Football team defense rankings: Jets, 49ers, Eagles

If fantasy football positions were a TV show, you know which show the defense/special teams would be?

It would be “The New Adventures of Old Christine.” 

When you do a flyby of Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ career, you’re going to focus on “Seinfeld” or “Veep” – the running backs and wide receivers of her catalogue.

“Christine” is just this thing that exists – it isn’t embarrassingly bad, yet also not impactful enough to earn a spot atop your watch list. 

It could be worse.

It could be “The Michael Richards Show.”

Does anyone even remember that happening for a couple of months near the end of 2000?

That show is the TV version of fantasy kickers – imminently forgettable and not at all missed.

But back to “Christine” – err – defense/special teams.

So, it’s gotten late in the draft and now it is time to draft a kicker – like a “Christine” rerun coming on just as your drifting off to sleep and you can’t change the channel because the remote is across the room.

So, what do you do? Well first, congrats on doing the right thing by waiting toward the end of the draft.

There is far too much volatility between DST options from year to year, and even week to week, and not enough separation from top to bottom over the course of the season to have enough faith in any particular unit to draft it earlier than the last 2-3 rounds.

When it is time to choose, we prioritize talent. And we think the most talented unit is the 49ers.

We also like the Jets. But they’re both likely gone by now.

After that, we like teams that perform well from year to year — which doesn’t happen as often as you would think. 

The Patriots and Cowboys, however, have both finished either first or second the past two seasons. 

And the Bills have been top five two straight years and top 10 four straight — and they get a healthy Von Miller this season.

All of those are gone too, eh?

For our next criteria, we like teams that win a lot (particularly those that also score a lot), so add the Chiefs and Eagles to this list.

The Dolphins get a look here too, as well as the Ravens — if you have faith Lamar Jackson can recapture his 2019 form. 

Next, we go to teams in bad divisions, or teams that have those divisions on their schedules.

Those bad divisions to target are the NFC South and, to a slightly less degree, the AFC South.

The NFC South is loaded with what likely will be bad offenses.

And since these two divisions play each other in interconference games, that is a boost for all members. 

NFC North teams also get to play the NFC South, and AFC North teams get the AFC South.

For potential landmines, we’re going to steer clear of teams that had terrible defenses last season.

if they prove us wrong, we can likely add them during the season.

So leave the Bears, Raiders, Falcons and Lions off your cheat sheet.

And, we really don’t mean to condescend — since this is sort of a given, yet you never know who gets their information from where these days – but you can always stream DSTs.

In fact, you should probably sort of plan to — at least after your drafted team has its bye. 

Unless you sneak into the sweet spot when it is acceptable to briefly carry a second DST for one week (your roster is loaded, your record is great, nothing on waivers worth adding at an important position that week, you have a top-scoring DST), then you should plan on dropping whatever DST you have when that bye week comes.

Each week after that, you replace your DST with the best available, based on matchup, unless/until you find one worth sticking with for a while. 

Betting on the NFL?

And that’s it! Now you have your fantasy defense/special teams plan sorted out.

With all this free time on your hands, shut the laptop, grab the clicker and queue up some “New Adventures of Old Christine.”

You’ll have an OK time.