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by Sweaty Swami

I continue to be shocked at how much the Team Defense position is ignored. More than any other position, Team D scoring is affected by their weekly matchup. This means that to maximize scoring at your Team D slot, it’s important to scan the waiver wire every week and make sure you’re not just sticking with the same Defense every week, even against terrible matchups. Green Bay’s D was started in 55% of leagues against Minnesota last week, for instance. There’s no excuse for that unless you have to start 2 Team Ds or you’re in an 18+ team league.
Don’t be the guy who starts Pittsburg D @Denver, Baltimore D @Cincinnati, or SD D @NYG this week. Here’s my week 9 Team D pickups:

Atlanta D vs Washington – available in 84% of yahoo leagues. Frankly I don’t care about any of Atlanta’s defensive starters. I don’t care how they’ve done so far this year. They’re at home against Washington. That’s should be enough incentive to start them over almost anyone.

Jacksonville D vs KC – available in 92% of yahoo leagues. This one isn’t as sweet as Atlanta, but they should get the job done if you’re dealing with terrible matchups or byes from you other Ds. And they’re available practically everywhere.

Another strategy which I highly recommend is to look 1 or 2 weeks ahead when picking up waiver wire defenses. You can count on the bad offenses staying bad (St. Louis, Washington, Cleveland, Oakland and to a lesser extent KC, Buffalo, Detroit, Tampa Bay); so when you see a waiver wire Defense with a sweet home matchup against one of these teams week 10 or 11, pick them up NOW rather than waiting for another manager to notice them next week and beat you to them with their waiver priority. Miami D vs TB week 10 and Tennessee D vs Buffalo week 10 specifically come to mind.