Week 8 Defense (DEF) Streamers, Starters & Rankings: 2022 Fantasy Tiers,

Writing about and analyzing fantasy football defenses oftentimes feels like a particularly insane task. I spent most of the week wondering if I had been too high on the Cardinals and Packers, two defenses who were rated highly in my weekly model but had failed to perform up until that point. I kept going back and forth before deciding to leave them both in my top ten, and they both ended the week as top ten defenses. However, I spent zero time questioning whether the Bucs should be an elite defense for this week against the Panthers, or whether the Patriots would be a strong play against the Bears. Both of those teams finished outside of the top 20. Sometimes it just doesn’t make sense, and we need to not overreact to it.

However, overall, we had a strong week, hitting on six of the top ten defenses and also having the Titans as a strong 12-team league play. I did miss on Miami though. I haven’t yet decided if the defense is starting to wake up or if Pittsburgh’s offense is that bad, but the Dolphins were a terrible fantasy defense through the first six weeks, so I didn’t have any confidence in their ability to muster a strong showing, and I’ll have to eat that one.

As a reminder, every week I do a YouTube DST video called Pick 3(DST) where I give you three defenses I like during the week and one that I’m fading. We have some fun with it, but I think it gives a lot of the same reasoning I present here, so check it out for some video fun. And my BOD Leaderboard is available on Public Tableau, where you can see my updated BOD rankings, plus a leaderboard for the individual defensive stats I use for the BOD formula, and some of the offensive stats that I think can help us determine which DST to play or not. Also, make sure to always check back with this article over the weekend because I will my updated rankings as the week goes on when we get injury news or troubling weather information, etc.

What is the BOD Ranking Formula?

Last year I introduced my Best Overall Defense (BOD) rankings formula, and I’ll be using it again this year. I’ll give a quick overview of the formula below, followed by my general strategy for streaming defenses, and then my Week 8 fantasy football defense (DST) rankings. Good luck in Week 7 everyone!

The BOD (Best Overall Defense) formula takes into account my favorite stats for picking the right defenses (both positive and negative) and weighs them in a formula. You can view the RANKINGS AND COMPLETE LEADERBOARD of all the stats I use here. I tweaked the formula as the season went on last year, and I feel like it gives us a pretty good indicator of who has the best defenses for fantasy purposes. If you don’t want to click that link, the formula is:

(Pressure Rate x 2) + (Sacks) + (QB Hurry Rate) + (Pass Break-Ups) + (%Drives ending in a Turnover x 2)

Minus

(Missed Tackles)+ (% Drives ending in a Score x 2) + (Yards per play)

It’s important to clarify that the BOD rankings ARE NOT to be treated as…