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2020 Fantasy Football Rankings: Defenses

The defenses you need to win your league.

Los Angeles Rams v Pittsburgh Steelers Photo by Justin K. Aller/Getty Images

Drafting fantasy defenses is a tricky affair. Fewer and fewer leagues are running with a roster spot for team defense, as leagues start to favour either IDP (individual Defensive Players), or doing away with the position all together and adding extra flex spots. Also you have the huge swings from year to year in terms of consistency, with each of the last three top scoring fantasy defenses (2016 Chiefs, 2017 Jaguars, 2018 Bears) all dropping by at least 10 places the following year. This lends itself to being able to identify an edge in drafts and exploit it, allowing other teams to go after the recency bias and allowing you to continue to stack offensive options.

My preferred drafting strategy for defenses is not to draft one at all, or if the season is very close to starting, take one in the last round and make it my best available Week 1 streamer. From then on its all about streaming a new defense weekly, as in redraft leagues, you tend to find plenty of options (and good ones at that) available every week as few players draft multiple defenses when there are relatively few bench spots available. I post a weekly defense streaming article during the season so whether you want to draft and forget your defense, or stream weekly, we have you covered here at Fake Teams.

2020 Redraft DST Rankings

Rank Team Bye LY Rank
Rank Team Bye LY Rank
1 Pittsburgh Steelers 8 2
2 Buffalo Bills 11 6
3 San Francisco 49ers 11 3
4 New Orleans Saints 6 8
5 New England Patriots 6 1
6 Los Angeles Chargers 10 21
7 Philadelphia Eagles 9 14
8 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 13 10
9 Baltimore Ravens 8 4
10 Denver Broncos 8 20
11 Los Angeles Rams 9 9
12 Minnesota Vikings 7 5
13 Kansas City Chiefs 10 11
14 Tennessee Titans 7 12
15 Seattle Seahawks 6 17
16 Indianapolis Colts 7 13
17 Dallas Cowboys 10 15
18 Cleveland Browns 9 24
19 Green Bay Packers 5 18
20 Atlanta Falcons 10 19
21 New York Jets 11 7
22 Chicago Bears 11 16
23 Arizona Cardinals 8 31
24 Cincinnati Bengals 9 30
25 Carolina Panthers 13 23
26 Miami Dolphins 11 32
27 Las Vegas Raiders 6 28
28 Washington Football Team 8 26
29 Jacksonville Jaguars 7 22
30 Houston Texans 8 25
31 Detroit Lions 5 29
32 New York Giants 11 27