2020 Fantasy Football Rankings: Defenses

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.