Fantasy Football: Thursday Night Football and its Impact on Lineup Decisions (D/ST)

Last week on XN Sports we published a study looking into the historical performances of fantasy quarterbacks who started on Thursday Night Football (TNF). The numbers weren’t all that pretty, and in case you missed it, you can refresh yourself by reading the article here.

The most revealing observation from that study was that only 32 percent of all eligible quarterbacks put up a Top-12 weekly fantasy finish when playing on Thursday Night.

It was fascinating delving into the TNF fantasy QB numbers, so we thought we would look at other fantasy positions, and how they performed during TNF match-ups. This time around the focus is on the D/ST position in fantasy football.

With fantasy leagues having different scoring rules and settings, the site used to look up the historical fantasy data was FantasyData.com, and their scoring setting for the D/ST fantasy position can be found at this link.

As a reminder, only true TNF games were included in this study. That means TNF games played on Friday or Saturday weren’t included, neither were Thanksgiving day games, nor TNF Week 1 season openers.

In total, 106 D/STs qualified for study, out of eight years, including the two TNF games that have been played in 2013 so far. You can see the numbers for yourself below.

*The D/STs have been ordered by weekly fantasy finish, so don’t be alarmed if you see multiple teams with the same rank in the season, such as New England and Kansas City as DST3 in 2013. That just means they finished as the third highest scoring fantasy defense in their respective TNF week.

Thursday Night Football Fantasy D/ST Scoring History

2006-2010

Thursday Night Football Fantasy D/ST Scoring History

2011-2013

When looking at the numbers, 43 out of 106 eligible TNF fantasy D/STs finished the week as DST12 or better, meaning they were fantasy starting worthy in standard 12-team fantasy leagues. Those numbers equate to around 41 percent.

If you’re wondering how D/STs fared each year, here’s a year by year DST rounded average breakdown:

• 2006-DST17
• 2007-DST20
• 2008-DST18
• 2009-DST15
• 2010-DST17
• 2011-DST13
• 2012-DST13
• 2013-DST12 (4 teams only)

The average finish of D/STs that play on TNF is equal to that of DST16.

It’s interesting to note with the increase of TNF games, that the average TNF D/ST rose from high end D/ST2 to near DST1 territory. Could the fatigue of the short week be catching up to defenses? It’s possible, but with 2012 being the first year that TNF games became a regular staple of the NFL schedule we can’t really say for certain.

What’s also interesting is that 50% of 2011 D/STs finished in the DST1 range, and in 2012 that number was 53.7 percent. While there’s only been two TNF games so far, the number of D/ST1 performances is at 50 percent on the year.

Just as was mentioned in the TNF study of the quarterback position, the numbers found in this article shouldn’t be the sole basis of any starting line-up decision you have to make in fantasy football. This article, and the data presented in it is just more information for you to use when deciding if a TNF D/ST is worth starting or not.

*Stats used in this article are from FantasyData.com
If you want to look at each TNF game in more detail, you can do so by viewing the yearly TNF schedule on NFL.com.

Salvatore Stefanile

Salvatore Stefanile is a member of the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and believes that 2-QB fantasy football leagues will be the future of fantasy football. You can read about his 2-QB fantasy football opinions and analysis at XNSports.com.

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