Written by: Jai and Josh.0 | 09 April 2016

Here is how the NFC spent their money on the defensive side.  As stated in the first article, the goal of this was to recap and highlight what we observed from the results on the inaugural IFL auction.  However, instead of looking at it team by team, we wanted to look at how money was spent at each position in the conference.  Enjoy!

Note – The following numbers were pulled from the rosters on April 4th.   

Total Spent per Position
DT	$72,930,000.00
DE	$202,879,000.00
LB	$394,830,000.00
CB	$64,379,000.00
S	$145,785,000.00
TOTAL	$880,803,000.00

A few quick points:

• 353 players were selected on Defense (79 more players than the offensive side)
• More money was spent on the offensive side than defensive (a difference of $417,172,000.00.)
• DT – Avg. $4.55mil per team, a total of 39 DTs were selected
• DE – Avg. $12.67mil per team, a total of 65 DEs were selected
• LB – Avg. $24.67mil per team, a total of 120 LBs were selected
• CB – $4.02mil per team, a total of 64 CBs were selected
• S – Avg. $9.1mil per team, a total of 65 Ss were selected

For a better picture of position breakdown

Table Legend:

• Green Highlight – Most spent (4 teams)
• Red Highlight – Lowest spent (4 teams)
• % – Based on money spent at the position divided by the IFL salary cap ($155.27mil)

The following is great commentary and analysis from Josh.0! With a few quotes from NFC GMs.

DT

If we’re being honest, Defensive Tackle is just a weird position. Like CB, evaluating who will be good in fantasy often times has very little to do with their real life quality. 3-4 DTs are the lynchpin of the front 7, need to be able to 2 gap, occupy multiple large offensive linemen, and still make tackles, yet their production rarely shows up on the stat sheet.

Still, Aaron Donald is a beast in anyone’s book! His 8M salary explains why Carolina Nils has 10M locked up at the DT position, in a virtual tie with NY D Jordan who invested in 3 DTs. Green Barry, Philly Chris and Atlanta Floyd all loaded up with 4 Defensive Tackles.

Over in Texas, Noob Dallas Brian apparently considers DT unimportant to his plans for his NFC East Glory Hole, as he spent the absolute league minimum required by the rules at the position. I simply had to ask him about this. So I cornered him by the water cooler, invaded his personal space, and blew stale coffee breath up his nostrils. He capitulated to my demand for an interview soon after. Here is what he had to say:

“There will be a lot of DTs earning their NFL roster spots in training camp. I will be keeping an eye on those guys and hope to find 1 or 2. Hell, 7 of the top 32 fantasy producing DTs are still free agents in the IFL. I believe Nick Fairley will be more than serviceable. Saints signed him to a 1 year contract and he wants big money next yr. I also have Cedric Thornton who is currently listed as a DE but he’ll play inside for Cowboy’s in their 4-3 defense.”

While Brian waits for Rotoworld to change Thornton to a DT, the rest of us are going to move on to a more interesting position: DE.

DE

San Francisco was the clear big spender in this position group. Since I spent 10M more than the second highest spender, D Jordan, I feel I should explain myself:

“JJ Watt speaks for himself, but he cost a pretty penny. I’m talking about a Batcave-sized penny. Big Cat Williams and the Hughes brothers are pretty good in their own right, and depth here was a priority. DE is a shallow position, and it’s one I want to dominate.”

Washington Brian and Tampa Luke both employed interesting strategies at the position. Brian spent 1.5M on a couple of younger DE and league min on another 2.

BrianWash was kind enough to take time out of his busy day to provide the IFL with the following nugget:

“Technically I drafted chandler Jones, but I traded him.”

Insightful!

Luke went the other way (hey-ooo!), spending 16M on just 2 DEs, the lowest number rostered in the NFC.

On the flip side, NFC North rivals Green Barry and Motor City Mac both went the volume route, rostering 6 DEs and spending between 12M and 17M to do it.

LB

If there is one position the league apparently agrees is important, it’s at Linebacker. Only Floyd and Brian rostered less than 7 and Motor City Mac loaded up his flatbed with 11 of the monsters. Total spending was in a pretty tight range with outliers of 40M at the top to 15M at the bottom.

Seattle Will added three of the league’s top LBs at an average cost of 10M per, then went on to add another 4 more for depth. The combo of Bowman, Kuechly and Posluszny ranks as one of the pre-season’s top corps.

Minny Wade paid his LBs a mini salary and came dragging up the rear in spending, but he still managed to roster 7 players. He had this to say about his strategery:

“My approach to the LB position is: Don’t overpay. There are many older guys still playing at a high level but with concussions (Kuechly) and the rise of the pass game it is prudent to invest in younger talent. Taking a long game approach it was important for me to not rent high dollar players at this position and instead rely on the draft to build my LB corps. Picks 1.09 and 1.10 will offer me the opportunity to lock up a solid player at value.”

CB

Philly Chris spent 10.5M on CBs. No other owner spent above 5M. Chris takes us under his kimono to discuss this most unsexy of positions:

 “I wound up spending the most on CBs for a couple of reasons.  The primary reason is that I took more corners than anyone else; I took 5 corners, three of which rank in the top 5 and all of them rank in the top 15.  That’s about 2 more corners than most other teams took.  I took them because it’s a cheap position to build depth and find value at.  I targeted certain players due to youth and production, especially Marcus Peters, Josh Norman, and Aaron Colvin.  Peters, Norman, and Jones I got bid up on, i.e., entered my max bid and people came close to breaking it, which is why I wound up paying so much for those three specifically.  I am happy with my corner depth, age, and value (my other 2 were cheap) and have no problem with having spent the most in the NFC on them.”

S

I’m running out of steam here so I will end this too-long article with the following observation about Safeties: Brian only has 2. I blew some more java breath up his nose and he gave me this:

“Plenty of time to grab a couple extra safeties through the veteran auction, rookie draft, and even in free agency. There are some NFL safety spots yet to be won. Look for me to pounce on them. I’m also planning on the Cowboy’s keeping Byron Jones at Safety this yr”

The questions lingering over the S position are numerous. Are S important to winning? Or can you find a decent one on the waiver wire pretty much every week? Are the top ones completely interception dependent? Or do Big Nickel backs offer solid upside and value?

Nils, Green Barry, D Jordan and Luke Monster all invested around 12M in the position, so they must see value there. So I asked.

Here again is Luke Monster:

“I feel safeties are important to a championship contender, as when I looked at the previous championship teams they all had a great combo at the position. The problem with safeties is that they’re volatile, and there are usually some good ones to find on the wire. I think it’s key to have to great safeties, but spending big money on them isn’t essential.”

 And here is Nils:

 “I actually only drafted Graham, Burnett and Gipson, for a total of just under 8.5M. I traded for Mark Barron because he is listed as a LB on both rotoworld and the official Rams depth charts now. So he will be designated as a LB by the time the season starts. At the time, there were no LBs left capable of scoring over 220 let along hit 260, so even though he will be less valuable than if he were a safety, he fits right in as a LB3 for me. Considering the price some of these guys hit, I am happy to have Barron at 5M.  If by any chance he keeps the S designation, I’ll run 3 safeties.

Graham was a no brainer for me. The Bills have a historically friendly stat crew and Graham racks up Tackles and Assists, he’s older but should have another S1 season, and at 3.5M he’s an absurd bargain.

 Burnett ended the season strong after an injury hampered him early in the season. He averaged 16 points over the final 7 games, which would have been good for LB24 numbers or S10 numbers, both a bargain at 4.2M.

 Gipson was very good in Cleveland before an injury riddled 2014/2015. I think he will have all the opportunity in Jacksonville to regain his reputation as one of the premier FS in the league and will be a solid backup who I see scoring 220 points this year.

I do firmly believe you can get good safeties on the waiver wire, but this league gave a bit more value to the top tier guys, and I felt that my budget allowed me to get a huge advantage on the back-end of my defense.”