In the NFL DFS landscape, many tournament players will curse the gods and bemoan what might have been when they see their positional players put up gaudy numbers only to be done in by an under-performing defense/special teams. Let’s dig into the numbers regarding defenses and take a look at what has happened to date, what was expected to happen to date as told by the FanDuel pricing, and most importantly for upcoming tourneys, what trends we might be able to detect from the data that can help us moving forward.

First we will break down the first 11 weeks of the season by looking at the weekly top five scoring defenses using FanDuel’s pricing. Where there is a tie at fifth, we will list all teams. In Week 9, we will only go four teams deep, as no others reached 10 points.

Week 1: Carolina 4,800 salary: Seattle 5,000: Jets 4,400: Denver 4,200: Baltimore 4,100

Week 2: Denver 4,200: Cleveland 4,600: Arizona 4,600: Jets 4,300: Tampa 4,000: Dallas 4,200: New England 4,300

Week 3: Arizona 4,700: Seattle 5,300: Denver 4,600: Philadelphia 4,400: Buffalo 4,500: Minnesota 4,400: Giants 4,200

Week 4: Detroit 4,300: Atlanta 4,200: Carolina 4,800: Green Bay 4,700: Oakland 4,500

Week 5: Green Bay 4,800: Denver 4,900: Tampa 4,000: Philadelphia 4,400: Seattle 5,100: Arizona 5,200: New England 4,700

Week 6: Miami 4,400: Philadelphia 4,500: Denver 5,000: Houston 4,800: New Orleans 4,000: Cleveland 4,400

Week 7: St. Louis 4,500: Jacksonville 4,200: Giants, 4,500: Seattle 5,200: Kansas City 4,600: Miami 4,500

Week 8: Houston 4,700: New England 4,700: Kansas City 4,700: Cincinnati 4,700: St. Louis 5,100

Week 9: Jets 4,700: Giants 4,500: Philadelphia 4,700: San Diego 4,600

Week 10: Kansas City 4,300: Buffalo 4,800: Pittsburgh 4,600: Houston 4,400: Washington 4,000: Minnesota 4,500

Week 11 (through Sunday): Kansas City 4,400: Carolina 4,900: Tampa 4,000: Baltimore 4,100: Indianapolis 4,000

The above data includes 62 teams that finished in the top five in weekly defense scoring. The first pattern I looked to track was home/road splits, but the results were disappointing: 29 home teams and 33 road teams – nothing juicy there, but still important to remember, as there are many DFS players who do tend to fade road defenses.

Next, we will look at the results against what was expected by taking the two highest priced defenses on the board each week and looking at where they finished.

Week 1: Seattle 5,000, 19 pts (2nd highest score): Carolina 4,800, 21 pts (highest score)

Week 2: Miami (5,100), 0 pts: Baltimore (5,000), -1 pts. (both well out of top 5)

Week 3: Seattle 5,300, 18 pts (2nd high score): Houston 5,000, 6 pts (out of top 5)

Week 4: Seattle 5,300, 9 pts: Arizona 5,000, 1 pt. (both out of top 5)

Week 5: Arizona 5,200, 14 pts: Seattle 5,100, 14 pts (both in top 5)

Week 6: Denver 5,000, 17pts (3rd high score): Arizona 5,000, 1 pt: Seattle 5,000, 7 pts (both out of top 5)

Week 7: Seattle 5,200, 13 pts (4th high score): Arizona 5,100, 8 pts (out of top 5)

Week 8: Arizona 5,400, 6 pts: Seattle 5,200, 5pts (both out of top 5)

Week 9: Denver 5,300, 7 pts: St. Louis 5,100, 3 pts (both out of top 5)

Week 10: St. Louis 5,400, 2 pts: Denver 5,200, 1 pt (both out of top 5)

Week 11: Seattle 5,400, 6 pts: Denver 5,300, 7 pts (both out of top 5)

Now we start to see an exploitable trend: Of the 23 teams that were priced in the top two for the week (3 way tie for top salary in week 6), 16 of them failed to compile a top five finish. Even stronger is the recent trend: since Week 6, the top two salaried defenses finished in the top five only 2 out of 13 times. We want to be fading the top two priced defenses right now and allocating the additional salary elsewhere.

Of the teams that have finished with a top 5 defense score, the top performers break down as follows:

Denver 5 times

Kansas City, Seattle, and Philadelphia 4 times

Arizona, Carolina, Houston, Jets, New England, Giants, Tampa 3 times.

You do not want to jump on the Broncos, however, as all five of their top 5 finishes were in the first 6 weeks. Other possible negative trends are Arizona having their top finishes all in the first five weeks.

The bright DFS future could lie with Kansas City, which has all four of their top five finishes since Week 7. Also of note is Houston, with all three of their top finishes on defense coming since Week 6. Keep in mind that the trends are always there to be found.