Drafting your Defense

Two posts in two days; whaaaat?! Yeah, that's the magic of Bob, my defense guru who is back this season with his musings on defenses on a weekly basis. For today though, Bob takes a look at the best defenses when it comes to drafting in 2016. Read on and enjoy.

Two weeks ago I gave you my take on how to draft Kickers. I’ve read a few more articles since and they have confirmed my assumptions. So this week I’m going to give you my take on Defenses. I know some of 

you have already drafted or are presently drafting. Here’s hoping I’m not too late for your season’s drafts.

Let’s start with some myths and tribal knowledge on Drafting Defenses. 

1.       Last year’s performance can give insight as to how they will perform this year. Yeah, most of you use this one. Why? Because there really aren’t many stats that help you to predict otherwise. Short of predicting differences in defense personnel or coaching changes, which gets really complicated, what else is there? Well I’m going to give you another one below.

2.       You should wait until your next to last pick to take a defense. Similar and related to drafting kickers which would rank as the last pick to those that hold to this strategy. One reason this is popular is the same reason you wait on a kicker. There’s just not a lot of difference is points between the 1^st and 12^th ranked performance from the previous year. And you would be right but it’s bigger than the difference between kickers. And since there are exceptions for kickers to draft earlier, so too are there exceptions for defenses. The second reason, however, is much better, and that is because a person plans to use the ‘streaming defense’ strategy. More on that in a later article.

3.       Pick a defense based on ‘experts’ projections. This one is really a crap shoot. Most of these experts make the same mistakes as everyone else. There are some out there that are pretty good. I haven’t researched them yet, but the former is usually the case. See the chart below.

4.       Pick a defense that has been ‘consistent’ over a period of time. This one gets closer to a better pick, but doesn’t guarantee a winner either. And where the hell do you find that data without generating it yourself. Some will go with teams that are known to be good defenses. But that changes so quickly in our free agent world that it becomes a tough sell year to year. Well, I’m here to help, and we’ll cover consistency below.

So those are the big 4 considerations for drafting defenses, #1 being the most used, followed by perennial defenses as mentioned in #3 above. Sadly, many use the idea in #2 that states there’s not much of a difference so why bother. But many of the better players are using ‘streaming defenses’ and I’ll be here with weekly offerings on who those are each week.

So let’s look at some data pertaining to #1. Here are 3 years of the top 12 drafted defenses.

2015					2014					2013
EOY Rank	Drafted	Team	ADP		EOY Rank	Drafted	Team	ADP		EOY Rank	Drafted	Team	ADP
5	1	Seahawks	7.5		4	1	Seahawks	6.4		1	1	Seahawks	7.2
19	2	Bills	8.9		10	2	49ers	8.8		6	2	49ers	7.11
6	3	Texans	8.12		14	3	Panthers	9.2		17	3	Bears	8.10
9	4	Rams	9.11		12	4	Rams	10.2		32	4	Texans	9.2
14	5	Eagles	11.3		11	5	Broncos	10.3		10	5	Broncos	9.9
26	6	Dolphins	11.6		19	6	Chiefs	10.8		4	6	Bengals	10.2
1	7	Broncos	11.9		23	7	Bengals	10.11		9	7	Patriots	10.10
11	8	Jets	11.11		7	8	Patriots	11.5		26	8	Packers	12.1
2	9	Cardinals	12.0		8	9	Cardinals	11.8		11	9	Ravens	12.2
15	10	Packers	12.11		3	10	Texans	12.10		7	10	Rams	12.5
4	11	Panthers	13.3		26	11	Bears	13.5		18	11	Steelers	12.8
13	12	Patriots	13.4		31	12	Saints	13.10		5	12	Cardinals	13.5

First thing that jumps out at you is Seattle. That’s an example of consistency. Rams and Texans are in that category as well. But look at some of the fails: Texans in 2013 drafted 4^th and finished dead last in points that year, Bears had a good 2012 drafted 3^rd and ended up 26^th.  49ers had a good 2013, drafted 2^nd in 2014 and finished 10^th, not bad, but not what you were looking for.

Then there’s the pre-season hype from experts that can get you in trouble. Last year everyone was talking about the Bills and the Dolphins, who finished 19^th and 26^th respectively.

We also have to look at the wisdom of holding out before picking a defense. Here are the differences between the best defense at the end of the year and the #12 defense for that year by average points per week:

2013 Best Def was SEA drafted first with ADP of 7.2 averaged 15.2 pts/game. #12 was the Colts, undrafted averaged 10.2 pts/game. So the difference was 5 points per game, I would call that significant.

2014 Best Def was BUF drafted 14^th averaged 13.2 pts/game. #12 was the Rams, drafted 4^th averaged 10.6 pts/game. So the difference was 2.6 points per game, not nearly as significant as 2013.

2015 Best Def was DEN drafted 7^th with ADP of 11.2 averaged 14.1 pts/game. #12 was the Redskins, undrafted averaged 10.4 pts/game. Difference of 3.7 points per game. Again, pretty significant.

Drafting a defense in the 7^th round means you probably drafted 2 RBs, 2 WRs, 1 QB and 1 TE prior, which means you gave up potentially a RB3, WR3 or QB2. And you have to ask yourself was that worth it. And you’ve got to remember, only one year provided you the number one defense with that pick.

So let’s talk about how this all helps us for this year. Here are the ADPs so far this year compared with team consistency.

Def Picked	Team	ADP		EOY Rank	2015	2014	2013	Avg
1	Broncos	9.1		Seahawks	5	4	1	3.3
2	Cardinals	9.8		Cardinals	2	8	5	5.0
3	Seahawks	9.11		Panthers	4	14	3	7.0
4	Panthers	10.7		Broncos	1	11	10	7.3
5	Chiefs	11.10		Chiefs	3	19	2	8.0
6	Texans	11.10		Rams	9	12	7	9.3
7	Vikings	13.0		Bills	19	1	8	9.3
8	Rams	13.6		Patriots	13	7	9	9.7
9	Patriots	13.10		Eagles	14	2	20	12.0
10	Bengals	14.0		Bengals	10	23	4	12.3
11	Packers	14.11		Texans	6	3	32	13.7
12	Steelers	14.12		Colts	16	13	12	13.7

Here we can get some clues as to which team you might draft this year and how early. There is a correlation between this year’s ADP and the last three year’s consistency rating with the top 5 teams: Broncos, Cardinals, Seahawks, Panthers and Chiefs. But below those five teams the correlation falls off dramatically. So given that information, here are my projections as to when you should be drafting defenses.

Broncos 9^th round, if you’re lucky enough to be able to wait that long. That way you have a good start on your backup RBs and WRS and a potential top DEF.

Cardinals middle to late 9^th round, again you have some good backups to your WRs and RBs where you can sacrifice to get a top Def.

Seahawks middle to late 9^th round, same effect as the Cardinals.

Panthers 10^th round, and you’ve got 3 WRs. 3 RBs, 1 TE, 1QB and a backup QB or TE.

Chiefs 11^th round, and you have a solid team started without sacrificing key backups.

After the chiefs WAIT! There may be some that are tempted to take the Texans with a healthy Clowney, or the Rams, but I can guarantee you that you will be better off waiting and streaming defenses for the year. And I will be here each week projecting the best streams for you to select from. What is ‘streaming’? Well you’ll have to trust me and wait for the next article. But take advantage of those picks from 11^th to 13^th round for those sleepers and flyers. You’ll get better returns in the long run.