Best Early-Season D/ST Matchups - Fantasy Football Strength of Schedule Analysis

The NFL regular season is so close now we can smell it. We can taste it. We excitedly look at the rosters we may have already drafted, and impatiently await our last few drafts. We are on the precipice of the annual transition from draft season to the actual fantasy football season, with Week 1 squarely in sight.

Many in the fantasy football space have spent all off-season preparing (and more importantly striving to prepare you) for your drafts, and many of the same people (including myself) will continue to aspire to help you during the fantasy season. This fantasy strength of schedule article series aims to do just that, and now we look closely at a fantasy skill position I spent most of 2023 writing about weekly: Defense/Special Teams (D/ST).

Which top-tier defensive units also have a fantasy-friendly schedule? Should you spend relatively high draft capital on a D/ST projected to be elite? Or should you approach your draft with Week 1 in mind, waiting on D/ST until the last few rounds and drafting a unit with a great start to the season? I am firmly on one side of this decision, as you will see in this article.

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Projected Strength of Schedule (SOS) Process

In this article, I will present my projected strength of schedule for the fantasy D/ST position, with a focus on the early part of the season (Weeks 1-4) and the middle time frame that follows (Weeks 5-9).

A D/ST's strength of schedule should not be the sole reason you choose to draft or not draft that unit. But it should be a piece of the puzzle. It can be a good tiebreaker. If you are on the fence about drafting a top-tier D/ST, a brutal opening schedule should at least be factored into your decision.

By projecting matchup difficulties now and also breaking the season down into different time frames (e.g., early, middle, late, and fantasy playoffs), it also allows you to strategize for D/ST "streaming," where you string together lesser-rostered D/ST's based on matchup strength.

We’ll start by looking at my season-long projections including some insight into my process and what data I use to project the strength of schedule. Then we’ll look closer at early season SOS (top 10 easiest and top 10 hardest in Weeks 1-4). Unlike my SOS articles covering RB, QB, and TE, I will not be looking at middle season SOS (Weeks 5-9) for fantasy D/ST in this article.

Fantasy matchups are something I’ve spent a lot of time on over the last three years. During the season I compile game log data for every game to arrive at raw fantasy points allowed to each position as soon as possible each week. The goal is to have the results available before waivers so matchup strength can be factored into those decisions.

Plenty of sites provide fantasy points allowed data. I choose to do it myself so I can rearrange and reorganize in ways I think are helpful. Raw points allowed are helpful but don’t tell the full story. It’s important to dig a little deeper and look at points allowed relative to an opponent’s average.

For example, if Team A gives up 14 fantasy points to the Ravens DST and Team B gives up the same number of points to the Cardinals DST, raw fantasy points allowed would show Team A and B being the same matchup difficulty versus DSTs. Using “Points Over Average (POA)” paints a more accurate picture.

Let’s say the Ravens' DST has averaged 16 points per game and the Cardinals' DST has averaged 4 points per game. Using POA, Team A held the Ravens two points under their average (a POA of -2) while Team B allowed the Cardinals to score 10 points above their average (a POA of +10). Through this lens, these two teams are far from an equal matchup difficulty. This turns raw fantasy points allowed to an “opponent-adjusted” fantasy points allowed.

The other angle I add once the weeks add up is recency. A team’s season-long average points allowed can look different than over a more recent stretch of games. Offenses and defenses improve or regress for a variety of reasons. Players get injured or return from injury, coaches adjust their schemes and game plans (on both sides of the ball), and, more qualitatively, players and teams “figure it out.” Neither season-long nor recent data sets are definitive, but it’s important to look at both when trying to increase the probability of making the right future decisions.

These are the two existing data sets in my process for preseason projections of fantasy strength of schedule:

1. Previous season POA rank (season-long).
2. Previous season POA over the team’s last five games (excluding Week 18).

Stopping there doesn’t account for the impact of changes made during the off-season. If we could simply use previous season results to predict what will happen the next season, fantasy football would be a lot easier (and less fun). For the future prediction piece of the process, I use Pro Football Focus (PFF) grades for team defensive lines, linebackers, and secondaries, as well as overall team offense grades (for DST).

These grades are added to the equation in the following way:

• Versus QB: Defensive line and secondary grades.
• Versus RB: Defensive line and linebacker grades.
• Versus WRs: Secondary grades.
• Versus TE: Linebacker and secondary grades.
• Versus DST: Overall team offense grades.

2024 Season-Long Fantasy SOS

I generated tables showing each team’s full season schedule with each weekly opponent color-coded based on that opponent’s projected rank (1-32) versus the fantasy RB position. Lower number ranks with a red color indicate more difficult fantasy matchups. Higher number ranks with a green color represent easier matchups. Also known as schedule “heat maps,” the full season schedule for RBs is included at the end of the article.

Also included are each team’s season-long SOS, which is the average of their opponents’ ranks in Weeks 1-17.

As described above, the projected ranks are based on:

• 2023 POA season-long rank
• 2023 POA rank over the team’s last five games (Weeks 13-17)
• 2024 PFF team offense rank

Softest Early Season Schedules – Process

In separating the full season into “early, middle, and late” time frames, I define each as follows:

• Early Season: Week 1-4
• Middle-Season: Weeks 5-9
• Late Season: Weeks 10-14
• Fantasy Playoffs: Weeks 15-17

In this article, I will be looking at the Early Season schedules and the teams with the Top 10 easiest and Top 10 hardest fantasy matchups for D/STs. I will look closer at Middle, Late Season, and Fantasy Playoffs in future articles.

My process for determining the Top 10 easiest Early Season schedules for each D/ST is the same as season-long. I average the opponents' ranks in Weeks 1-4 for each team, and the ten highest averages comprise the Top 10.

When I wrote this article during the 2023 off-season, I introduced what I call “Top-Heavy” schedules. Some of the “easy schedules” that are initially determined by average projected rank tend to include an additional top-heavy characteristic:

Top-Heavy schedule:

A mixture of bottom-ranked opponents with one Top 10 matchup. This could also be called “Extreme Matchups.” In this scenario, there may be one week where you are hesitant or at least need to curb expectations, but outside of that, the probability of ceiling games for your fantasy players on those teams is higher. I developed a formula for determining Top-Heavy schedules.

I remove each team’s most difficult matchup from the average rank. I then averaged the remaining three ranks. From there I added the difference between 32 (easiest rank) and the new average of the team’s three easiest ranks. This is then filtered from highest to lowest to show the Top-Heavy SOS score and rank.

The purpose here is to remove the impact of the one difficult matchup on the overall average while also accounting for just how easy the easier matchups are. The bigger the difference between 32 and the average of the team’s easiest three matchups, the lower the score, because that difference is being subtracted.

The reason I chose to look at this particular breakdown was to determine if there is a significant deviation from the score arrived at by simply averaging the ranks of the first four opponents. I know we cannot simply ignore difficult matchups, but I would rather take my potential lumps with one brutal matchup if it means the chances are higher that the other three opponents could be week-winning matchups.

Soft Early Season Schedules – Defense/Special Teams (DST)

The following chart shows the teams with the Top 10 easiest Early Season schedules for DST, along with the rest of the teams from 11 to 32.

The following chart shows each team’s matchup rank (color-coded) in Weeks 1 through 4, followed by the average rank and Top-Heavy score.

One of my favorite in-season, regular activities as a fantasy manager is streaming DSTs. I love looking ahead at matchups and picking up DSTs preemptively when my roster construction allows it. I gladly watch my league mates reach and spend relatively high draft capital for the best NFL defenses, like the Browns or 49ers, while I grab depth at the WR and RB positions.

I then pick one of the teams with a great Week 1 matchup in the last few rounds. This year that target for me is the Bengals, with a Week 1 home game versus the 32^nd-ranked Patriots.

The Bengals also have the top-ranked Early Season DST schedule, with Week 3 and 4 matchups against the 28^th-ranked Commanders and 31^st-ranked Panthers. The problem is their Week 2 game in Kansas City. My strategy will likely involve drafting the Bengals DST late for Week 1, and dropping them for Week 2, as no one will want to start them against the Chiefs.

For Week 2, I would hope no one wanted to draft the Jets with a Week 1 road matchup with the 49ers, but like I said above, a lot of managers reach for the best defenses regardless of their Week 1 opponent, so the Jets will likely be rostered.

Another sneaky option is the Seahawks. They do not make the Top 10 Early Season list due to games against the Dolphins and Lions in Weeks 3 and 4. But they open the season with the 29^th-ranked Broncos and 32^nd-ranked Patriots in the first two weeks. With the strategy of streaming DSTs (starting with the draft based on the Week 1 opponent), the Seahawks have the best starting (Week 1 and 2) schedule.

The only other teams with similar two-week soft matchups to start the season are the Chargers (versus the Raiders and Panthers) and the Giants (versus the Vikings and Commanders), but the Seahawks’ schedule is slightly more favorable and they are a better defensive unit.

Here are the Top 10 toughest Early Season schedules for DST.

Several top defenses begin the season with brutal matchups (another reason why I will always stream the position). The Jets do not make the Top 10 toughest Early Season SOS, but they have the most difficult Week 1 game in San Francisco. The Ravens and Chiefs play each other, the Browns get the Cowboys, and the Eagles face off with the Packers.

The situation does not improve much for the Chiefs in Week 2 against the Bengals. The Ravens get a home game with the Raiders in Week 2, but again, to end up with that matchup you likely have to reach for the Baltimore DST in your draft, then take your immediate lumps in Week 1 against Patrick Mahomes.

The Jets and Browns are the only two top defenses I could make an argument for drafting a little earlier because, after each team’s Week 1 test, their schedules are ideal through Week 5. In Weeks 2 through 5, the Jets face the Titans (27^th), Patriots (32^nd), Broncos (29^th), and Vikings (25^th). In that same span, the Browns get the Jaguars (19^th; not fantastic) followed by the Giants (30^th), Raiders (23^rd), and Commanders (28^th).

With DST, I will not be looking at the middle-season SOS as I did with the other fantasy skill positions.

Before I go, I will leave you with the full-season heat map schedules for each team across each fantasy skill position. Good luck in your upcoming drafts and have a great fantasy season in 2024!

2024 Strength of Schedule vs. D/ST

Thank you so much for reading! I love diving deep into the fantasy strength of schedule with the hope that I can help you make the best decisions possible in the maze of fantasy football decisions. I will not be writing the weekly DST article for Rotoballer again this year, but I will still be compiling the data, and I am always available to help out. If you have any questions about this article or general questions about fantasy football, reach out to me on X (@MunderDifflinFF).

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