We are back y’all! After a couple of long weeks with the site down, it is good to be back! And just in time for the long weekend of turkey, pie, and so much fantasy football! I know I only posted the Week 9 picks on Twitter, but let’s look at them and get back into our groove.
- Houston Texans: 1 pts – Bust
- Green Bay Packers: 12 pts – HIT
- Week 9: 1 Hits – 1 Busts
- Season: 17 Hits – 11 Busts
Alright so Week 9 was not great to us, but we are still sitting at 60% accurate. I mentioned it previously, but I’ve been working on a D/ST macro to help with my picks. Going into Week 9, it was high on the Texans as they were on a good trend. Now, it’s a bit more reasonable with them.
Before we get into the picks for Week 12, I want to give you all a little look behind the camera of the macro. The reason I want to do this is because I want to look at the difference between my macro and using ESPN’s Average Fantasy Points per Game. Right off the bat, there’s three D/STs that my macro hates compared to ESPN’s raw averages. Those D/STs are Chicago Bears, the Minnesota Vikings, and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Looking at my model compared to ESPN’s average, my model is saying those D/STs will all score roughly 3.5 fantasy points less than their average on any given week.
On the other hand, my macro has four team D/STs that it is projecting will score a full point or more than projected. Those D/STs are the Carolina Panthers, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Houston Texans, and the Detroit Lions. It’s not saying that these teams are good or bad. It’s just saying that it’s projecting them differently than ESPN does. In fact, both my macro and ESPN’s averages have the same Top four D/STs, but in a slightly different order. To me, that’s a good sign. I’ll stop rambling about that and just get into my picks.
Kansas City Chiefs – Rostered 58.7%
The Chiefs are secretly one of the best fantasy D/STs. My macro has them at 3rd best and ESPN has them at 4th. With a division rivalry matchup against the Raiders, this is a good matchup to target. The Raiders are one of the best teams to target for your D/ST streamers and the Chiefs are a team to stream in good matchups. From Week 6 till their Week 10 Bye, the Chiefs D/ST only had one game they scored less than 10 fantasy points and that was a 9 point week. Since Week 6, Raiders opponents scored 10 or more fantasy points in 4 of those 6 matchups. This is a great situation of a D/ST that scores a lot playing a team that allows a lot for fantasy football. Stream them where you can.
Houston Texans – Rostered 7.8%
The Texans D/ST is quickly becoming my new 2021 Philadelphia Eagles D/ST. I picked them multiple times in the back half of the season and had them as my top target in the 2022 draft season. If the Texans keep building on their defense in the offseason, they could be one of my sleeper picks next year. For now, they get a matchup against a hot-and-cold Jaguars team at home. Three of the past four games for the Texans D/ST have been HITs with the only miss being the last time I picked them. Go figure. While most teams that play the Jaguars end up being BUSTs for our scoring, the Jags have been shown to allow strong D/STs to score well against them. This is one pick I’m shaky on, but still think this could workout well for fantasy.
New England Patriots – Rostered 28.0%
What’s this? A forth pick! Why not, you know? Who says I have to only have three picks. This is my article so I’ll do it my way. The Patriots are not a good team. However, they are playing an even worse Giants team. For those of you who have seen South Park, this will be one of those kind of fights. It will not be good! In fact, this may be the second lowest scoring game on the season. The only game that could be worse was that 10-6 snoozefest by the Colts and Pats in Week 11. Hopefully this will be a bit more exciting.
Conclusion:
I decided to come back with four picks instead of three. As we go into a long weekend, don’t forget about setting your lineups. I hope that these picks can help you with some waiver decisions. Good luck this week! Fight for that playoff push! Make the moves you can to get that title. As always, may the streams flow your way!
Hunter Greene
Hunter started writing for The League Winners in the summer of 2021. Hunter has been playing fantasy football for about a decade, starting in middle school. Now he’s a professional landscaper and avid Colts and Purdue fan. He primarily writes D/ST Streamer articles in season and Dynasty/Draft content in the offseason.