You’ll notice the fantasy points plotted per week and that horizontal bar represents what the replacement-level DST’s fantasy team win percentage is overall for the year – giving us a way to compare how much better the Bears were above the replacement DST. For example: in week 9, Chicago destroyed the Nate Peterman devolved-Bills into the mid 1980’s by hanging a “Sweetness” like 34-spot. Looking over to the y-axis, you can see that this performance on a fantasy team gave Bears DST owners a little over an 80 percent chance of winning their match-up that week.

Still don’t believe the Bears DST was worth an early second?

Consider this. Both the Bears DST and James Conner went undrafted in most leagues – so they allowed fantasy owners to build the rest of their teams equally. As you can see from the WAR table above, James Conner came out to be worth the #8 selection of 2018. According to ESPN, James Conner’s value of being undrafted landed him as the player with the highest rate of fantasy team owners making it to the playoffs in 2018. 75.9 percent of fantasy teams’ who owned James Conner made it to the dance. Second place player on this list? The Chicago Bears DST at 69.3 percent. Pretty darn close. Yes, a DST had the second biggest impact on whether fantasy teams made the playoffs due to a combination of their productivity and draft value.

The stats don’t lie people. If Chicago’s DST gave fantasy teams on average about as much of a boost to make the playoffs (with a similar draft position) as a sure-fire 2019 first-rounder like James Conner, you can’t just shrug this take off. You can’t.

The Chicago Bears DST was worth a second round pick in 2018. But obviously, we only know this now due to hindsight. Like Conner, the Bears DST went largely undrafted and was only picked up after Khalil Mack pummeled Aaron Rodgers in week 1 so hard he forgot how to drink beer.

Whatever you do though, don’t conflate this fact with the idea that we should have seen this coming. For all of my Chicago homers who were still high off the Khalil Mack trade and went HAM on DST in the first few rounds, basically what I’m saying is that you got pretty lucky and, statistically speaking, that was stupid. But, much like lottery winners, it’s better to be lucky than smart. I had a friend draft a kicker in the 6th round once end up winning the league. Dumb luck happens.

What does this mean for 2019?

So when should you take the Bears DST in 2019? DST year-over-year consistency is spotty at best, so expecting them to stay this ahead of the curve again is not likely. This is a simple regression to the mean fact of life. Learn your lesson from the Jacksonville Jaguars last year. In 2017, they were the only DST in the last five years to score more fantasy points than the 2018 Bears. They went ahead to crap the bed in 2018.

Word from training camp is that the change from DC Vic Fangio to Chuck Pagano has been a smooth one and most of the key defensive players from 2018 are returning. I wouldn’t mind using a 7th or 8th round if you are secure in the other positions (minus QB, because screw QB).

If you miss out on the Bears, basically punt until the last couple rounds and get ready to fight your league’s other team owners each black Wednesday of the season for streamers. The following guidelines will help you along the way as they have been used reliably and without fail for eons:

DST Streaming Strategy

Is Nate Peterman Starting? Yes – pickup whoever is playing the Bills No – pickup whoever is playing the Browns

Hold up. The 2019 Browns are about to make some serious moves so make this slight adjustment to the DST streaming guidelines:

Is Josh Rosen Starting? Yes – pickup whoever is playing Miami No – Is Ryan Fitzpatrick Starting? Yes – pickup whoever is playing Miami No – Is Miami even playing this week? Yes – pickup whoever is playing Miami No – pickup whoever is playing Miami NEXT week

Wondering what the WAR results for other positions are?

Quarterback WAR

Wide Receiver WAR

RB WAR

TE WAR

-El Jefe