Assembling a roster of top players is the goal of fantasy football. Hypothetically, a roster comprised of the best players should have the inside track to a championship.
Defensive line might be the most satisfying position in fantasy football. A defensive lineman can’t be derailed like a wide receiver relying on a third-string quarterback when the matches matter most. A weak technician can’t compensate like a poor passer with a Konami code. Talent identification can’t be circumvented by waiver wire bids for the next man up, and pass rushers most certainly do matter!
Household names fill the leaderboard of defensive linemen in fantasy football. Six of the first eight linemen drafted, on average, on the Sleeper fantasy football platform reside among the top 12 scorers at the position through 16 weeks. The two missing – Aaron Donald and Chase Young – have missed several games each.
Scoring Leaders Across the Board
The new All-22 fantasy football platform assigns the second-highest value to edge defenders, after quarterbacks, based on NFL player contract values. All-22 uses weekly grades from Pro Football Focus and multiplies them by position weights to yield fantasy scores by player.
Five of the top seven scoring edge defenders in All-22 are also leaders in conventional fantasy football. Three of the top seven – Myles Garrett, Maxx Crosby, and Danielle Hunter – appear among the top twelve defensive linemen on the Footballyguys’ leaderboard for scoring at the position. Two more of these seven (Alex Highsmith and Haason Reddick) would comfortably rank inside conventional rankings’ top twelve if not for their linebacker position designations.
Missed time makes a big difference in All-22 scoring and is the only reason Nick Bosa and Josh Sweat don’t rank near the top in that format. Conventional fantasy football’s top twelve linemen also include all five interior defenders leading All-22 scoring at the position.
Talent Assembly in Philadelphia
IDP gamers and content creators are always focused on identifying the linebackers who will play full-time and the safeties with plum roles. These factors rival talent as differentiators in fantasy football.
At defensive line, the cream rises to the top. The league’s impact interior defenders emerged early in 2002. Former first-rounder Dexter Lawrence overcame the challenges of playing nose tackle to establish himself as a pass-rush force.
The relationship between talent and fantasy production is strong but not perfect. ESPN analytics writer Seth Walder tracks pass-rush wins to track success among defensive linemen. A “pass-rush win” is a lineman’s success beating the block against him in less than 2.5 seconds. Walder’s chart shows the league’s best players collecting quarterback sacks and pass-rush wins.
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Haason Reddick is easily the most surprising member of this cohort. The Eagles’ 2022 free-agent signee is playing for his third team in as many years. He belatedly broke out in 2020 with the team that drafted him 13th overall in 2017 to play off-ball linebacker. After three lost years playing out of position, Reddick may well be developing into one of the league’s better pass-rushers and fantasy options at the position.
Reddick has had his skeptics within fantasy football, perceived as a player succeeding only on volume. He played 79 percent of the Cardinals’ defensive snaps in 2020 and, in 2021, 83 percent of the Panthers’ defensive snaps. He collected 24 quarterback sacks through these two seasons playing opposite Chandler Jones in Arizona and then Brian Burns in Carolina.
Reddick has outdone himself in 2022, scoring 14 sacks while playing just 72 percent of Philadelphia’s defensive snaps through 16 weeks. He has notched at least a half sack in seven straight games. His playing time has crept up steadily during the streak.
Eagles’ defensive end Josh Sweat is on a similar roll. He has at least one sack in five straight. After playing under 50 percent of Philadelphia’s defensive snaps in the middle of the season, Sweat’s reps have surged with his sacks. Even so, his share of snaps resides at 60 percent for the season.
Remarkably, Sweat ranks ninth among fantasy defensive linemen with 119 points (7.9 FPPG). Reddick, eligible at defensive line on only a portion of fantasy football platforms, has accounted for 148 points (9.9 FPPG) by Footballguys’ scoring.
Sweat finished 35th among defensive linemen in 2021 despite missing the last game and not earning a start until Week 4. The ascending young player is listed 125th among IDPs in average draft position on Sleeper. While Footballguys subscribers might have been tuned into Josh Sweat for 2022, the masses may have ignored him over their same skepticism for Reddick – the Eagles’ well-known deep rotation.
Talent Limitations
Reddick and Sweat have undoubtedly benefitted from the Eagles’ acquisitions of defensive backs James Bradberry and Chauncey Gardner-Johnson. Playing downhill with the league’s best record has helped, too.
In contrast, Dolphins Jaelan Phillips and Bradley Chubb have suffered inefficiency due to weakness and injuries in their secondary. A team’s inability to hold coverage reduces the time its pass rushers have to convert a win into a sack.
Bill Belichick’s ability to construct effective defenses has helped the likes of Deatrich Wise and Josh Uche to sacks and fantasy relevance. Matt Judon has been afforded twice as long as some rushers to finish the play.
The risk of relying on situation (e.g., coverage quality) and opportunity (i.e., snap share) in fantasy football valuations is the difficulty in predicting each. The Dolphins expected Byron Jones back this year.
Maxx Crosby is playing almost full-time. He has not done that in past seasons, and his defensive coordinator has never tasked an edge rusher with such a workload. The Giants deployed rookie Kayvon Thibodeaux for 97 percent of their defensive snaps in their last outing. This type of volume cannot be reasonably projected before the season starts.
Indianapolis has routinely played from behind this season. Grover Stewart consequently leads all interior defenders in snaps in run defense, as reported by Pro Football Focus. Among players Footballguys classify as defensive linemen, only Maxx Crosby has more. Currently sitting at 17th among fantasy linemen, Stewart has already cleared his career high in tackles made with two games to play. Few prognosticators pegged the Colts as bottom-feeders for the 2022 season.
Talent Pursuit
Football talent is much easier to evaluate than situation and opportunity. Evidence of it is available to see before the season starts. The reason that six of the top eight drafted defensive linemen are fantasy hits is that they are known to be good players. Additionally, the younger players rising up fantasy leaderboards have flashed talent. Josh Sweat, Dexter Lawrence, Jaelan Phillips, and Quinnen Williams are all players who have won accolades and praise from mainstream critics and institutions in years past.
It would be too far to state that rotations don’t matter. Crosby’s workload is fueling his place atop the leaderboard through tackle compilation. Fretting a projected 70-percent share, however, is to eschew the good for the perfect. Lorenzo Carter quite predictably ranks near the top in reps among edge defenders (81% snap share), and no one sought him out in typical drafts.
The lesson of the 2022 season is to relish the best-aligned fantasy position on either side of the line of scrimmage. Dynasty gamers can focus on building talented defensive-line corps over the off-season with just one fear – position designation.
A time is coming when fantasy football platforms place pass rushers in one bucket, tacklers in a second, and coverage players in the third. Until then, the loss of a talented pass rusher to a linebacker redesignation can only be accepted as a bad beat.
Analysis at Footballguys aims to equip fantasy gamers with the confidence to acquire players for their rosters and deploy them on Sundays. As the 2022 NFL season winds down, this column will assess lessons learned and prepare readers for dynasty fantasy football’s non-point-scoring season. Last week’s edition focused on safeties. Readers are welcome to contact and follow this writer @DynastyTripp on Twitter.