1 Defense or 2?

[a4ce]

I pick 1 DEF/ST. Use my other draft spots on sleepers/fliers. When the bye week comes up, I just drop/trade one of the sleepers/fliers for the fill-in DEF/ST. By that time, maybe a DEF that's on the WW might actually be pretty good enough to keep and play match-ups with.

[Dan Lambskin]

1 for sure...

if you have a stud D like the Bears, by the time their bye rolls around you'll likely have someone who gets hurt that you can drop

[Cowboys#1]

We had a manager in one of my leagues pick 4 defenses. I guess he thought he would have trade bait. Pick only 1 defense.

[pokeyjoe]

I would go with one unless your league has quite a few people, just because it's so easy to pick one up off the wire.

[hookem2003]

Absolutely only one. Even in a deep league, I would rather take a flyer/sleeper in hopes of great trade bait.

[Jacob1207]

I'm going to go against the (vast) majority here and put in a good word for the 2 defenses strategy.

The top 3-5 defenses are always overspent on by those who draft them. I prefer to take a defense later in the draft (getting it for a much better value). And there are always a few defenses which outperform expectations who can be picked up once the season opens. Then I play the matchups. If there is a really good matchup for a FA defense, I'll drop one of mine and take that one for that week.

Of course, you should always drop your least valuable bench player if there is someone on the WW or in FA that will be more valuable than the bench player. But it's silly to say that no 2nd defense is ever better than a 5th WR.

I think that some of my colleagues may be a bit more emphatic about only ever having one defense on the roster than many situations would allow. I've made it to the title game three years running while basically going with a two defense strategy. By not taking a defense as early, it lets me draft a better WR or another decent RB.

[Paladyr]

I'm in a league this year where we are limited to 16 transactions the entire year so I will definitely be taking 2 defenses and playing matchups with them.

[Sixxgunn]

Here's my theory for this year on defenses. Try to get a good one (Chicago) even if it means overspending just a bit, because it really does make a difference having consistent points from your D. Whoever you are taking that late will almost always be dropped or traded anyway. If not, then just wait and take two decent ones. If you go the second route, focus on a D that has the earliest possible bye week. Then you drop the one D after the bye week and find a WW pickup to fill the slot, keeping the second D for the rest of the season.

[citybirds27]

We had a manager in one of my leagues pick 4 defenses. I guess he thought he would have trade bait. Pick only 1 defense.

I wonder where he finished

But I also going to argue with the majority and say 2, depending on the # of teams and roster size.

[Plindsey88]

I got CHI defense and plan to just pick up another defense come thier bye week. I personally prefer the one top DEF route cause it allows more room to take risks other places. It's allowing me to hold onto D.Rhodes,C.Benson & R.Dayne in addition to C.Portis and S.Jackson. If I had two DEF I'd have to lose one of my backups and for me that would be a tough decision.

Not sure you can really overspend on a defense unless you take it first round.
From last year off Standard scoreing, the top two defenses had 200 and 195 points. There were 6 other teams above 150 with only one above 170. Takeing one of the last DEF avilable would have gotten you 75-100 points less. That's a few losses over the course of the season because of your DEF.

As for haveing two DEF all year, I would probley go with one team that's solid in pass DEF and one in run DEF then play them accordingly.

I played 9 different defenses in my main league last year...

I outscored Chicago's defense by 40 points over the course of the season...