Fantasy Football Draft Strategy: Eric Samulski's tips for drafting a D/ST | Rotoworld | NFL on NBC

fantasy football season is almost here but there is still time to talk strategy so for today I'm going to give you my tips for drafting a defense yes a defense so bear with me I know many of you will just say oh I just stream defenses but I think a little bit of strategy can help make our draft as effective as possible um last year 11 defenses averaged eight fantasy points or more according to fantasy pros scoring uh in per game half PPR leagues that was the same as Drake London Ezekiel Elliott dein Singletary and I'm not telling you to draft a defense over those guys uh and drafting a defense doesn't have the same make or break consequences as your first round wide receiver or your favorite sleeper running back but drafting the right defense can help you win a week or help maximize your the effectiveness of your lineup for multiple weeks during the season so let's dive into my top five rules for drafting a Fantasy Football defense rule number one never be the first person to draft the defense yes if you have the first pick in the last round or the second to last round and nobody's drafted defense yet you can obviously be the first person to draft the defense however there are some people that will tell you it's okay to reach early to draft the defense you really want but the data just doesn't back that up in 2017 uh ESPN analyzed 15 years of ADP data and found that only two times had a defense who was drafted first second third or fourth according to ADP in a given year finished that year as the top overall defense that means just two of the top 60 defenses drafted in those 15 years wound up as the top scoring Fantasy Football defense uh those are atrocious odds of Landing the top defense just because you draft the First Defense and things really haven't gotten better in recent years last year six of the top 10 defenses at the end of the year were drafted after the top five defenses were already off the board two of the top 10 defenses last year were actually drafted outside of the top 10 overall defenses generally we want to avoid things that have just a 3.3% success rate so I really don't recommend jumping rounds early to be the first person to draft a defense rule number two never draft more than one defense now I know the stats I just read to you in rule number one might have you thinking well if I just draft two defenses then I can play matchups early in the season and my answer to that would simply be no uh while late in the season I do like holding two defenses so you can play matchups at that point we kind of know the P the player pool overall at the beginning of the season I really don't recommend holding to defenses I'd much rather use that roster spot for a lottery ticket at running back or wide receiver until we get a better sense of how snap shares and Target Shares are going to play out in every single offense rule number three when in doubt hunt for turnovers every single week I put out my bod rankings that's best overall defense it's based on a formula I use where I look at a lot of the underlying metrics that I prefer things like uh pass rush win rate uh quarterback hit rate passes defended explosive play rate allowed and I try to use those stats to tell me what defense is playing really well on the field not just putting up good fantasy Point totals this offseason I went back over all of those stats and I ranked each team one through 32 based on their performance then I looked at the top 10 overall defenses last year and I tried to see how many times they finished top 10 in any of the stats that I had used for my rankings five of the top 10 defenses in 2023 finished inside the top 10 in explosive play rate allowed and finished inside the top 10 in quarterback hit rate however seven of the top 10 defenses last year finished inside the top 10 in turnover rate now I know that might not surprise you but it's important to note that that's better than sack rate um and or sack totals and that's the exact same as scoring rate leaders so what that means is if you're deciding between two defenses a defense's turnover rate is actually more valuable than their sack totals and equally as valuable as how many points they will allow so turnover rate is a really good way to decide a tiebreaker routine due two defenses not just looking at how many points a defense will allow rule number four plan just two or three weeks at a time uh when I do my weekly rankings I post on Reddit I get so many comments about set it and forget it defenses and I really dislike that term um it's incredibly rare to find a defense like that just over the course of a whole season and it is almost impossible to find a set it and forget it defense coming out of your draft uh sure it would be great to land the 2023 Raiders who were drafted as the 17th defense off the board and finished seventh at the end of last year however before week eight the Raiders defense averaged just 4.4 points per game and they scored a total of six points in the first four weeks you would almost assuredly have dropped them by that point in the time and then had to go to the waiver wire to pick them up to get all of their success the second half of the season and there are examples like that every single year more often than not the best defenses emerge as the year goes on you can find solid units that will give you solid foundational uh scores every single week but finding the top defense or a set it and forget it defense is incredibly rare um to me that doesn't mean streaming every single week it means managing your risk and finding defenses that have at least solid matchups for multiple weeks if I'm streaming every single week I'm spending waiver money or using my waiver priority every single week to try to pick up a good defense that waiver money could be really useful at the end of the year if I'm trying to fill in for an injured quarterback or running back or wide receiver Etc so early in the season I really don't want to be blowing that much money on the waiver wire just to pick up my defense rule number five draft with week one in mind but don't overrate it I know a lot of people like to go into the draft and say I'm just taking the defense with the best week one matchup and I think that is important but I really don't want to be again making a way claim right after week one to add another defense so for example the Saints play the Panthers in week one and we really like that matchup but then they get the Cowboys and the Eagles in the next two matchups which means you're going right to the waiver wire after week one if you draft the Saints um instead of drafting solely for week one I'd look at teams that have good line good schedules over the first couple of weeks like the Seahawks who play the Broncos and the the Patriots in the first two weeks so you'll hold them at least until week three or the Chargers who open up the year matchups against the Raiders Panthers and Steelers so you're not looking for another defense until week four I'm not saying you should take these over top tier defenses if top tier defenses fall on your lap you can take them and take their four or five points in a bad week in the first couple of weeks of the season but I'm just saying let's try not to draft strictly because of a week one schedule so with all that said who are the defenses that I'm looking to draft in my fantasy football drafts this year well I'll just say if any of the Cowboys 49ers or Steelers fall into my lap I'm more than happy to take them because I think they're strong defenses and I'm not at all worried about their early season matchups um I'll still also probably take the Jets and the Browns if they fall to me but I have a little more concern over their week one matchups uh the Jets get the 49ers and the Browns get the Cowboys and I don't love those matchups but I do love those defenses so I'll take them and hope that they get just a passable score in the first couple of weeks if I don't get the opportunity to take any of those five defenses I really like drafting the Texans they're my seventh ranked defense headed into this season um and they get the Colts Bears Vikings and jaguars to start the year I really like those four matchups um I also like the Packers as a fringe top 10 defense this year they don't get a great first matchup against the Eagles however their matchup after that are the Colts Titans Vikings Rams and Cardinals so I'm willing to kind of eat what I think will be a mediocre performance um against the Eagles for those five matchups that I'm going to get after that uh in deep performance I'm also targeting the Seahawks and the Chargers who I mentioned before and I think that you could also look at the Broncos as well they get the Seahawks Steelers bucks Jets Raiders Chargers Saints and Panthers in their first eight games uh there's really none of those teams that I'm really running away from the hardest matchup would be the Seahawks but the Seahawks have Ty Lockett banged up heading into week one and I'm not really sure that's a matchup I need to avoid with that Broncos defense um under no circumstances do I see myself drafting the Chiefs or the Jaguars unless I'm in some weird two Defense League because I really don't like their first week one matchups I can't see playing them in week one and like I said before I'm not going to carry two defenses so I'm not rostering a defense in week one that I can't play that week um hopefully some of this was helpful I'll be back here every single week with my pick three DST video where I give you three defenses I like and one defense I'm fading uh and hopefully we'll help lead you to some success and some championships in the 2024 fantasy football season happy drafting