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.
**Cleveland, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Dallas, and San Francisco are assumed to be rostered**
Week 10 Results
Las Vegas (vs NY Jets) - 2 sacks, 1 INT
The defensive performance was better than the fantasy performance. The Bills D/ST is ice-cold, so we probably aren't targeting Zach Wilson this week.
A Look Ahead: @MIA KC BYE - Back to the waiver wire.
Indianapolis (at New England) 5 sacks, 2 INT, 6 pts allowed
Our biggest hit of the week as only three D/ST carried in most leagues - San Francisco, Cleveland, and Baltimore - were better in a typical scoring system.
A Look Ahead: BYE TB @TEN - We'll return to the Colts, who have been a top 10 D/ST this year. They are worth carrying through the bye if the scoring system is robust enough or the league is deep enough.
Cincinnati (vs Houston) - 1 sack, 2 fumble recoveries, 1 INT
C.J. Stroud outplayed Joe Burrow, and the Texans won. But the Bengals defense still forced three turnovers in a modest fantasy success.
A Look Ahead: @BAL PIT @JAX - The Browns got a pick-six against Lamar Jackson last week - and he has been careless with the ball at times - so the Bengals shouldn't be out of consideration just because of their opponent this week.
Seattle (vs Washington) - 3 sacks, 1 fumble recovery
Sam Howell had an excellent game, throwing more to the running backs to avoid the Seahawks' stellar young cornerback duo.
A Look Ahead: @LAR SF @DAL - Matthew Stafford should be back this week, so back to the waiver wire.
Chicago (vs Carolina) - 3 sacks
Bryce Young isn't good at very many things yet, but he avoided turnovers in this one.
A Look Ahead: @DET @MIN BYE - Back to hibernation.
Coulda, Shoulda, Woulda
Denver (at Buffalo) - 2 fumble recoveries, 2 INT
The Broncos have forced nine turnovers in their last two games - which happened to be against Patrick Mahomes II and Josh Allen.
Houston (at Cincinnati) - 4 sacks, 2 INT
The Texans defense has multiple sacks in each of the last four games and multiple takeaways in two of them.
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