The opening week of the 2022 NFL season is upon us, and fantasy football draft season is becoming a distant memory. Naturally, the early tendencies of fantasy owners include tinkering with rosters, scouring the waiver wire pool, and obsessing over the optimal Week 1 start ’em, sit ’em calls. For most positions, you ultimately stick with your studs, but at D/ST, you might want to look for a matchup-based streamer right out of the gates. Our Week 1 fantasy defense rankings are here to help you make the right decision before lineup locks.
Fantasy defense remains a tricky concept. Some owners reach way too early for stud defenses in drafts, while others avoid selecting D/STs entirely and wait for closer to the season to pluck one off the waiver wire. Regardless of where you stand on draft day, starting a solid D/ST each week does indeed matter to the ultimate success of your team.
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You’ll notice in our rankings that the Bills and Rams, who were both highly ranked in the preseason, sit outside the top 10. A few factors go into that — mainly the fact that both Buffalo and L.A. field great offenses and that it’s a highly anticipated, nationally televised contest. The Bills also get docked because they’re missing Tre’Davious White (knee) and they’re on the road, while the Rams typically perform slightly worse in fantasy than on the actual field.
Another high-profile game, the Buccaneers at Cowboys on Sunday Night Football, bumps down the competing D/STs considerably. Whereas Tampa Bay features strength at basically every level of its defense, it often struggles to maintain consistency against high-scoring offenses. The Cowboys, meanwhile, seem due for some fantasy regression in 2022. Dallas finished as the No. 1 D/ST in ‘21 (30 points above No. 2 Miami), bolstered by an NFL-leading six defensive TDs. The ‘Boys turned the Bucs over four times early last season, so we’re giving them the slight edge over Tampa despite still being worried about them.
Plenty of usual suspects line the top of our D/ST rankings, including prime defensive bounce-back candidate Baltimore (@ Jets) after an injury-plagued ‘21 campaign. With Joe Flacco starting, how could we not like the Ravens? We also like the Bengals visiting the Mitchell Trubisky-led Steelers, as well as the Titans hosting the turnover-prone Giants, though that’s more of a deep-league play. We’re willing to “play the matchups” with both sides of the Browns-Panthers game, too, as Baker Mayfield is always a wild card and Jacoby Brissett’s game has plenty of warts.
You might opt to stick with your drafted defense even if it has a tough matchup, which is fine in a week where we only know so much about the matchups. But if an inexperienced and/or turnover-prone QB is starting, you usually want the D/ST going against them. Even mediocre defenses can be transformed into great weekly plays thanks to a few sacks, a couple takeaways, and one or two big plays.
Note: We’ll be updating these Week 1 D/ST rankings throughout the week, so check back for analysis and the latest player movement.
Week 1 fantasy defense rankings
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