Welcome back to another installment of our Fantasy Football D/ST Streamers article! We’re now halfway through the fantasy season so it’s win or lose time. We are at that point where each loss inches you closer to missing the playoffs, and each win claws you back up.
I know personally I am fighting each week in the Scott Fish Bowl 13 to get my two points each week to claw me up from my 1-7 start. For those who don’t know, the Scott Fish Bowl (SFB) is an annual charity tournament. Each week, you play against another person in your 12 team division and also against the division’s median score. But that’s not what this article is about! Let’s just take a look at last week‘s picks.
- Washington Commanders: 8 pts – HIT
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers: 3 pts – Bust
- Las Vegas Raiders: 4 pts – Bust
- Week 7: 1 Hits – 2 Busts
- Season: 13 Hits – 10 Busts
Maybe I should go back to talking about SFB with how I’m slowly approaching that 50% line. Currently, our D/ST picks hit at about 56.5% of the time. I’ll try to be on the plus side this week if I can. As a reminder, I’m picking from teams that are rostered in less than 65% of ESPN fantasy football leagues. I also consider a HIT as 5 fantasy points or more on the week. With that, here’s a look at some of the teams I like for this week.
Seattle Seahawks – 50.9% Rostered
The Seattle Seahawks are one of the few teams to be above the Hit/Bust line in all but two of their matchups. The fact that they are only rostered in ~51% of leagues in bonkers! Three of their six matchups were in the 8-10 fantasy points range with another week hitting 29 fantasy points. If we exclude their best and worst (-2 fantasy points) weeks, they are averaging three sacks and 0.5 interceptions per game this season. With a home game against a banged up Browns offense, this could be a juicy game.
The Browns will be without quarterback Deshaun Watson and could be without running back Jerome Ford, who has performed well in Nick Chubb‘s absence. In both of the last two weeks, the Browns have given up two interceptions and two sacks. While this offense played well against both the Colts and 49ers with their backs ups, they have shown some missteps. If the Seahawks defense can keep the pressure on the Browns, this D/ST could put up some points. I’d project them to hit around 6 to 8 fantasy points this week.
Detroit Lions – 45.7% Rostered
The Detroit Lions have been playing amazingly the past couple of years under head coach Dan Campbell. It feels like each year both of sides of the ball get better. That’s especially true for their fantasy football defense.
I remember two years ago, this D/ST was consistently near the bottom each week. Now, they’re a team to target as a streaming option. With five out of seven weeks resulting in them scoring 7 or more fantasy points, they’re averaging 6.1 per week. This week will have them facing off against the Raiders on Monday night.
Three of the last four games for the Raiders has resulted in their opposing D/STs scoring in the double digits. That includes last week’s Bears scoring 18 fantasy points! If 1 + 1 = 2, then a strong fantasy D/ST + an opponent that gives up a lot of D/ST points = a great streamer for this week!
Houston Texans – 9.1% Rostered
This is the weird one for me. I’m working on a new script to project D/ST scores for each team each week. This early version of my model is projecting the Houston Texans to have a good outing against the Panthers.
This script is pretty simple in that it projects the D/ST’s score by finding the average of how many fantasy points (FP) the D/ST usually scores and how many FP the opponent usually allows to their opponent’s D/STs. It’s still a work in progress, but if this works, that would mean the Texans D/ST would be on track to score around 8FP this week against the Panthers. This makes sense to me.
The Panthers are a good team to target for fantasy football streamers and the Texans are a pretty decent D/ST team. As a team, the Texans typically only allow their opponents to score around 18 points per game on the field. That’s good for a full FP for their D/ST each week. Add that they average a sack per game, 0.67 fumble recoveries per game, and 0.67 interceptions per game. While this may not seem like a lot, that would all add up to 6FP for the D/ST. That’s not including the points from yards allowed. This is a very risky D/ST, but there’s a chance it could be great. I guess we’ll see next week!
Conclusion
I started to update my old way of making my D/ST Streamer picks. I’m going to spend more time working on it, but if all things go to plan, next week will be the first week I will put it into action for all three picks. This week, I’m test driving it on the Texans pick. If anyone has any suggestions on how to adjust it or improve it, please reach out to me on Twitter/X! As always, may the streams flow your way! Good luck!
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.