There are generally two different theories about drafting defenses in fantasy football. Some managers like to draft a very good defense that they can rely on every week, while others will draft a defense based on a good Week 1 matchup and then stream the position each week.
Which of those strategies you use will impact the best defenses to draft for fantasy football.
The ADP for defenses tends not to get inflated quite as much as kickers, so ultimately, it is just about when you want to lock down a high-level defense if that is your strategy.
Let’s take a look at which defenses are best in our rankings and who could be a sneaky streaming option.
The rankings below are a consensus of our fantasy analysts and also shape the redraft values in our fantasy football trade analyzer.
Consensus Fantasy Football DST Rankings
1) Baltimore Ravens
2) San Francisco 49ers
3) Cleveland Browns
4) Dallas Cowboys
5) Miami Dolphins
6) New York Jets
7) Buffalo Bills
8) Kansas City Chiefs
9) Pittsburgh Steelers
10) Philadelphia Eagles
11) New Orleans Saints
12) Minnesota Vikings
13) Houston Texans
14) Chicago Bears
15) New England Patriots
16) Indianapolis Colts
17) Cincinnati Bengals
18) Denver Broncos
19) Jacksonville Jaguars
20) Detroit Lions
21) Green Bay Packers
22) Tampa Bay Buccaneers
23) Las Vegas Raiders
24) Los Angeles Rams
25) Seattle Seahawks
26) Carolina Panthers
27) Atlanta Falcons
28) New York Giants
29) Arizona Cardinals
30) Los Angeles Chargers
31) Tennessee Titans
32) Washington Commanders
Which Defenses Should You Draft for Fantasy Football?
You can generally make a case for drafting any of the top five or six defenses. All of them have the potential to be solid weekly options, but there will always be inconsistencies that mean you do not want to pay too much for any of them. There is no team that seems to be a consensus No. 1 defense, which means that no single ADP is too inflated.
When you consider some Week 1 streaming options, things get fun.
Three offenses are generally expected to struggle to open the season: the New England Patriots, the Denver Broncos, the Tennessee Titans, and the Minnesota Vikings. The opponents for each of those teams in Week 1? The Cincinnati Bengals, Seattle Seahawks, Chicago Bears, and New York Giants are intriguing.
All four of those teams are outside of the top 12 in our rankings, so they are unlikely to be drafted in most leagues. That means all of them could be streaming options for Week 1.
The Bengals and Bears both have tough Week 2 matchups, so there would be one-week streaming options. The Giants’ game with the Washington Commanders is tough to judge, so they could be a one-week streaming option.
The most intriguing defense streaming option for the first two weeks is the Seahawks.
Their opponents are the Broncos and then the Patriots, meaning they face two of the offenses expected to provide the least upside. That could come to a screaming halt in Week when the Seahawks face the Dolphins, but in the short term, they are an under-the-radar defense to draft for fantasy managers.