When you look at the average draft positions (ADP), it's easy to see that kickers and defense/special teams (D/ST) are the two lowest-valued parts of any fantasy football team. While it's rare to see any kicker selected in the early part of a draft, D/STs are typically drafted much sooner than kickers. Last year, if you wanted to grab a top-ranked defense, you invested a 10th-round selection, with the majority of teams filling their D/ST slot by the end of the 12th round.
Those selections may not seem early, but based on the historical performance of defenses, it's almost certainly going to be a waste of draft capital.
Let's start with this simple question: Over the past 15 seasons, how many times has a defense that was drafted first, second, third or fourth, according to ADP, actually finished as the top-ranked fantasy defense? Would it surprise you to know the answer is just twice?
Think about that. In 15 years, only two times in 60 selections did fantasy teams come close to earning back the draft capital they utilized on a top-four-drafted D/ST.
It gets worse. The actual average end-of-season placement in those 15 seasons for the top four D/STs drafted was 10th. Ouch. But it gets even worse, as during that same time span, the defenses drafted fifth to 16th finished with an average end-of-season rank of 13th, evidence that it's worth waiting at the position.
The average difference in total points scored between the first four defenses selected and the next 12 was just 11 points during the course of the season (less than a point per week). Factor in that the average difference in ADP between the top four selected DSTs and those selected between fifth and 16th was 50 picks. The only reason to select any player five rounds earlier than another option that basically scores the same number of fantasy points would be that his opportunity to score could increase due to the injury of another player. That can't happen at D/ST, so it's an absolute waste to take one so early.
Here's a quick list of players who were available last season, relative to the average draft position for D/STs from the past 15 seasons. Since there are 160 picks in standard-sized, 10-team leagues, only ADP averages of up to 160 were considered.
Look at that list of players (except Fitzpatrick). Even if they didn't all hit, consider what their potential was at the beginning of last season. Why would anyone pass up the chance to draft any of them for an advantage of less than one point per game at the D/ST position or, even more likely, no advantage at all?
To understand why this happens, look no further than why the top defenses are typically ranked as such during the preseason. You'll find that there's a strong correlation between the previous year's performance and the current season's initial rankings. What everyone seems to ignore is that the top defenses in one season typically score significantly fewer points in the subsequent season. In fact, the average drop in fantasy points scored for teams finishing the previous season as a top-five D/ST is 26.5 percent in that 15-year span.
Remember this on draft day. Don't chase last year's performance. It's much more likely that these teams will be busts than it is they'll return solid value. These results just scream for a recommendation for streaming at this position. For the uninitiated, "streaming" means you use the waiver wire to target favorable matchups throughout the season, swapping D/STs often in this case, instead of sticking with the same defense/special teams unit for a long period of time.
Why it works
Drafting a top-four D/ST meant you passed on one of the aforementioned players and your expected return was D/ST10. Fantasy owners who stream at the position typically utilize their final (or next-to-last) draft selection, which has no draft capital because you are forced to take your D/ST and kicker in these slots. By analyzing the scores of all D/STs that had their weekly ownership rate increase by at least 10 percent across all ESPN.com leagues last season -- and assuming those were the top steaming options -- we found that the average streamer compiled D/ST scoring comparable to the seventh highest at the position.
Identifying streaming options
While the streaming results above are good, you can achieve improved performance in streaming if you target specific metrics. First, it should come as no surprise that targeting teams facing opponents that finished at the bottom of the league is a good place to start. Last season, if you just streamed D/STs playing teams with five or fewer wins in 2015, your average end-of-season point total from the D/ST position would have ranked 10th, meaning you'd equal the scoring output of those who invested in a top-four ADP D/ST.
You can also get elite performance by targeting offenses that posted the lowest yards per attempt. Last season, if you started defenses against them, you would have finished with enough points to have owned the sixth-best D/ST. Even if you started only D/STs that were outside of the top 10 in terms of ADP against these teams, the total points scored by all your streamers would have given you the equivalent of the ninth-highest-scoring D/ST.
Treat D/STs like kickers on draft day
It's time to face facts: D/STs deserve no more draft consideration than kickers get. They should be one of the final two pieces to fill in your roster on draft day and nothing more. Let someone else waste the draft capital used to acquire them. Instead, you'll likely wind up with better performance at this position and a better lottery ticket at another. Seriously, which would you prefer: a D/ST likely to finish 10th and Ryan Fitzpatrick, or Jay Ajayi and D/ST streamers that would finish ninth?