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.
**Philadelphia, Baltimore, New England, Dallas, San Francisco and Buffalo are assumed to be rostered**
Week 16 Results
Tampa Bay (at Arizona) - 1 sack, 2 fumble recoveries, 1 INT
A solid showing for fantasy purposes, but this game was too close for comfort, considering it was a division leader against a third-string quarterback leading a team going nowhere
A Look Ahead: CAR - We’ll probably look elsewhere
Detroit (at Carolina) - Nada. Zilch. Bupkis.
Sometimes a team has a bad run defense for half of the season, a great run defense for half of the season, and a terrible run defense in maybe the most important week of the season.
A Look Ahead: CHI - No thanks, ma’am, I would not like another.
Jacksonville (at NY Jets) - 3 sacks, 1 fumble recovery, 1 INT, 3 pts allowed
Was it a good or bad thing for the Jaguars' fantasy D/ST that Zach Wilson got benched? I’m going to say bad
A Look Ahead: @HOU - This looked good on paper a month ago, but now the Jaguars basically have nothing to play for with the division title on the line in Week 18
LA Chargers (at Indianapolis) - 7 sacks, 3 INT, 3 pts allowed
How did Nick Foles once win a Super Bowl? Jim Irsay once again learns it can get worse than Matt Ryan
A Look Ahead: LAR - Baker Mayfield is hot, but so is the Chargers defense
Kansas City (vs Seattle) - 2 sacks, 1 INT
The Chiefs shut down the Seahawks for most of the game, but it didn’t show up in the sacks/takeaways
A Look Ahead: DEN - After the Nickelodeon Massacre on Christmas, we’re going back to Kansas City
Denver (at LA Rams) - Nada. Zilch. Bupkis
Suffice it to say, we had the wrong side of this one.
A Look Ahead: @KC - At least Ejiro Evero is focusing on the defense instead of becoming interim head coach
NY Giants (vs Minnesota) - 4 sacks
The Giants played well enough to keep them in the game but wasn’t a fantasy asset in this one
A Look Ahead: IND - It was worth playing them in Week 16 to have them for this matchup
Pittsburgh (vs Las Vegas) - 3 sacks, 3 INT
A hit as the Steelers defense held down Derek Carr most of the night, and Kenny Pickett did the rest on the last Pittsburgh drive
A Look Ahead: @BAL - If Tyler Huntley starts, there’s potential value here