There's a lot of strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, and take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit but which should help us become better players over time.

Turning the Lights Out on the Season

For most leagues, Week 14 represents the last week of the regular season. While many teams have been mathematically eliminated for a while, Tuesday morning marks the official end of the season for around half of all dynasty teams. No more lineups to be set, no more games to be played, all that remains is to clean out your locker and turn the lights off on your way out the door.

I would love to believe that none of my readers would count themselves among that number, but base rates rule everything around me (B.R.R.E.A.M.), so I'm guessing the true value is... fairly close to 50%. That's unfortunate, but it's also an opportunity. Once freed of the responsibility of fielding a valid lineup, we can cut all our dead weight and fill those spots with lottery tickets that have a chance of paying out next year.

And for most teams in most leagues, the place to start is simple: cut all of your defenses.

Defense Doesn't Matter (in April)

Some might find this counterintuitive. If your league breaks down scoring by position, I suspect you'll see the difference between the team with the most productive defenses and the team with the least is quite substantial. Having the highest-scoring defenses provides a significant edge in fantasy.

In the most extreme example, one of my leagues uses heavy performance-based scoring, with defenses losing a point for every point they allow. In that league, the difference between the Minnesota Vikings (225 points) and the 11th-place Seahawks (122 points) is bigger than the difference between Justin Jefferson (254 points) and 37th-place Rashod Bateman (152). 

Cutting the Vikings seems crazy; if the best defenses are so valuable, shouldn't you keep Minnesota so you can benefit next year, too? If holding defenses in April gave you a better shot at rostering one of the highest-scoring defenses in October, it'd easily be worth doing.

But it doesn't, so it's not.

The top 10 defenses in that league last year were the Ravens, Bills, Cowboys, 49ers, Chiefs, Steelers, Raiders, Buccaneers, Jets, and Saints. In 2023, the average rank of those ten defenses was 5.5. If defense was perfectly stable from year to year, the average rank today would also be 5.5. If defense was perfectly random, the average rank today would be 16.5.

The actual average rank of those defenses today is 17.5. There are as many defenses in the Top 12 (the Bills and Steelers) as there are in the Bottom 6 (the Cowboys and Raiders).

Defensive Performance is Rarely Predictive

Does that league's scoring make it a crazy outlier? No. In standard Footballguys scoring (which is relatively ungenerous to defenses), the Top 10 units last year were the Cowboys, Dolphins, Ravens, Bills, Jets, Browns, Colts, Giants, Raiders, and Steelers. Today, the average rank of those units is 17.8. I checked two other scoring systems, one of which relied heavily on yardage allowed and another of which placed disproportionately high weight on sacks and turnovers. The average rank of last year's Top 10 defenses in the yardage-heavy league is 18.9. The average rank in the turnover-heavy league is 18.1.

(In the yardage-heavy league, half of last year's Top 10 defenses rank in the Bottom 10 so far this year.)

Again, if you were choosing ten defenses completely at random, odds are the average rank of those ten defenses would be 16.5, so "last year's Top 10 defenses" perform worse than chance. And it's not a 2024-specific phenomenon; the amount fluctuates from year to year, but across a number of years and a number of scoring systems, the Top 10 defenses in Year N average a ranking of around 17 in Year N+1. This year's top defenses are no more likely to be top defenses again next year than any other defense.

Where Do Top Defenses Come From?

What if we look in the other direction? If we assume we need a top defense to compete, where would we have found them? Everywhere.

 In standard Footballguys scoring, the current Top 10 defenses are the Broncos, Vikings, Texans, Steelers, Bills, Packers, Cowboys, Seahawks, Lions, and Rams. Three of those defenses (the Steelers, Bills, and Cowboys) were top units last year; you could have held them and wound up with solid starters this year.

Or you could have just added the Broncos (15th last year), Vikings (20th), Packers (25th), Lions (24th), or Rams (31st) for free before the season. On average, across all four scoring systems the Top 10 defenses this year ranked 17.4 last year. The top ten defenses last year averaged a rank of 18.2 in 2022. (Notice how these values consistently underperform chance-- not by much, but history suggests that isn't entirely a fluke and there is in fact a very weak negative correlation in defensive performance from year to year.)

Again, it's good to have a productive defense, but holding a defense through the offseason doesn't improve your chances of getting one. Provided your league regularly has at least a dozen defenses available on waivers to choose from, you shouldn't waste an offseason roster spot on the position; on average, about a third of the worst defenses in one year will be among the best defenses in the next.

What Should You Do Instead?

What should you roster instead of defenses? Defenses don't gain value over the offseason, so anyone with that potential is a better bet. Many teams (including my own) benefited from two years of quality, startable TE production by adding a retired Rob Gronkowski at the end of 2019 and betting he'd come back. (I also spent several years carrying Andrew Luck through the offseason betting he'd come back; he never did, but that bet was still no worse than carrying a defense would have been.)

I love to look ahead at Over the Cap's list of impending free agents to find players who will potentially be in new surroundings (this has netted me a free Top 12 finish from Emmanuel Sanders, among others). I love adding any late-round or undrafted RBs who are largely forgotten as the second or third option on a team's depth chart (in recent years, I have gotten Kyren Williams and Chase Brown this way).

When in doubt, I can always fill out any openings with mid-round tight ends with a year or two in the league (who have an unexpectedly strong tendency to turn into starters ranging from Dalton Schultz and Jake Ferguson to George Kittle and Mark Andrews). I'm always willing to take a flier on players like Darnell Washington, Brenton Strange, or Luke Musgrave.

The vast majority of these fliers won't work out, but basically, any position player in the NFL is a better bet over the offseason than a defense. Once you are eliminated, use those roster spots on a player with a chance to see his value rise over the next nine months. And if none of your lottery tickets pay off, whatever defense you cut them for in August will probably be as good, in expectation, as the ones you got rid of in December.

Tiny Edges Matter. (A Tiny Bit.)

Will cutting your defenses really make a difference? Most of the time, no. Situations where one or two extra roster spots were the difference that led to landing Kyren Williams will be extraordinarily rare. But being the type of manager looking to work every angle, eager to seek every tiny edge... that will add up over time.

You shouldn't do it today. As long as your team is playing games, it's important to field a full lineup; the integrity of the league depends on everyone making a good-faith effort to win. But once you no longer have that obligation, you should get a head start on 2025. Odds are good that your team has a bit of catching up to do, anyway. There's no simpler place to start than cutting your defenses.