2013 Fantasy Football Defense Rankings – Early Bird Version

This exercise of writing the 2013 Fantasy Football Defense Rankings is a little tougher than all of the other sets of rankings we’ve done since the NFL regular season ended. Since a DST includes an entire defensive unit, along with all of the units on special teams, it’s a completely different animal than the singular player rankings, like quarterbacks and running backs.

(UPDATE: You can find our most recent 2013 Fantasy Football Defense and Special Teams Rankings posted here! We will continue to update these throughout the summer, as news and injuries occur!)

So it stands to reason that offseason movement, whether it’s additions in free agency, subtractions in free agency, new talented first-rounders from the NFL Draft, or veterans moving on to retirement, will change some defense/special teams units greatly.

But it’s the offseason, for goodness’ sake, and what’s better than pretending we all know the future!

Getting Defensive About Fantasy Scoring

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, drafting defenses in Fantasy play. Think about it – everything in Fantasy Football is about forward progress, scoring and compiling yardage. But defenses are the exact opposite of that. Drafting a defense is really more of a necessary evil, just because it has always been done, for a few decades now, in Fantasy Football.

I’m fleshing out an idea – let me know what you think.

What if you draft the San Francisco 49ers. And they hold their opponent’s running backs in Week 5 to just 73 rushing yards and no touchdowns.  That’s 27 yards short of 100 rushing yards. So your Fantasy opponent has to deduct 2.7 Fantasy points (or two points) from each of their running back’s total.

If the Niners hold their Week 5 opponent’s quarterbacks to just 210 yards, then your Fantasy opponent’s quarterback loses 4.0 Fantasy points (40 short of 250 yards).

Make sense? Of course, there’s a lot of stuff in there to figure out. But I thought it sounded like a fun exercise … I have to get out more.

These 2013 Fantasy Football Defense Rankings are my best guess at what we’ll be looking at in 2013, after free agency, after the NFL Draft, after trades and retirement, and after all coaching staffs are filled.
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2013 Mock Draft Round ONE – Round TWO

 

2013 Fantasy Football Defense Rankings

Top 60 Overall | QB | RB | WR | TE | K | DST | Rookies

 

2013 Mock Draft Round ONE – Round TWO

 

The 2013 Fantasy Football DST Rankings are likely going to change from month to month as we get closer to Fantasy Draft season, so check back often.