Rent-a-Defense: Week 4

Photo: Aaron Doster, USA Today Sports

Unless most of the teams in your league carry a backup defense, more than half of the league should be available to you every week. Perhaps instead of playing one above average defense every week, regardless of matchup, we should instead target the widely available waiver wire defenses with the best matchups in any particular week? You can always make exceptions if your rent-a-defense gets hot - heck, you might find a team worth starting all year by accident. Even if you don't, good matchups will continue to get greater in number as more QBs get injured or yanked as the season goes on. You can steal some points from bad weather come December. Each week I'll list the startable fantasy defenses on most waiver wires and rank them.

**Buffalo has a good-to-great matchup but assumed to be rostered**

Week 3 Results

Tennessee (vs Indianapolis) - 2 sacks

Carson Wentz was limited, but safe with the ball, so there were no D/ST fireworks in the Titans win.

A Look Ahead: @NYJ @JAX BUF - We want to start any D/ST against the Jets

Carolina (at Houston) - 4 sacks, 9 pts allowed

Davis Mills wasn’t terrible, he was merely overwhelmed.

A Look Ahead: @DAL PHI MIN - Time to throw the Panthers back to the waiver wire

Baltimore (at Detroit) - 2 sacks

The Lions offense was conservative because they kept it close for the whole game.

A Look Ahead: @DEN IND LAC - We’ll move on from the Ravens for a while, perhaps until their Week 1 matchup with Chicago

Arizona (at Jacksonville) - 3 sacks, 2 fumble recoveries, 2 INT, 1 DEF TD

Trevor Lawrence joined Troy Aikman and Peyton Manning in having two or more interceptions in each of his first three games. We’ll consider every defense against Jacksonville until further notice.

A Look Ahead: @LAR SF @CLE - Don’t want any part of the Rams as a D/ST opponent right now.

San Francisco (vs Green Bay) - 1 sack

Aaron Rodgers was on point and the Packers led for most of the game

A Look Ahead: SEA @ARI BYE - We’ll avoid NFC West matchups when looking for rent-a-defenses

Miami (at Las Vegas) - 3 sacks, 1 INT, 1 DEF TD

Elandon Roberts pick six made it 25 straight with a takeaway for the Miami defense

A Look Ahead: IND @TB @JAX - A limited Carson Wentz is enough to at least consider this matchup even though it didn’t work out in Tennessee last week.

Cincinnati (at Pittsburgh) - 4 sacks, 2 INT

We are going to start targeting Ben Roethlisberger when picking a rent-a-defense

A Look Ahead: JAX GB @DET - If you used the Bengals last week, you will likely stick with them this week