Fantasy Football Defense Rankings and Streamers for Week 13 feat. Dallas Cowboys, Washington Commanders, and more 

Streaming defenses can be a popular strategy in fantasy football, but your pick can make or break your scoring week. The NFL is a week-to-week business with new matchups to exploit and avoid to maximize weekly point totals.

Let's review the best weekly defensive streaming options and give you an overview of how the top defenses rank heading into the new fantasy week. For streamers, we consider all defenses under the 60% threshold in ESPN and Yahoo! Sports leagues.

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Fantasy Football Defense Rankings for Week 13

Detroit Lions v Houston Texans - Source: Getty NFL: NOV 10 49ers at Buccaneers - Source: Getty

Week 13 Defense Rankings	Opponent
1. Dallas Cowboys	vs. New York Giants
2. Washington Commanders	vs. Tennessee Titans
3. Tampa Bay Buccaneers	at Carolina Panthers
4. Houston Texans	at Jacksonville Jaguars
5. Denver Broncos	vs. Cleveland Browns
6. New York Giants	at Dallas Cowboys
7. Kansas City Chiefs	vs. Las Vegas Raiders
8. Detroit Lions	vs. Chicago Bears
9. Minnesota Vikings	vs. Arizona Cardinals
10. Indianapolis Colts	at. New England Patriots
11. Buffalo Bills	vs. San Francisco 49ers
12. Seattle Seahawks	at New York Jets

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Fantasy Football Defense Streamers for Week 13

#1 Dallas Cowboys Defense vs. New York Giants

New Orleans Saints v Dallas Cowboys

The Tommy DeVito experiment was a disaster for New York last week. In Week 12, the Giants turned in an embarrassing, non-competitive performance against a mid-Tampa Bay defense. This game was over by halftime, as DeVito could only muster 189 passing yards for an unstartable QB25 finish.

The only real takeaway with this new version of the Giants' offense is that we can comfortably stream defenses against them for the stretch run. DeVito is a long shot to start on Thanksgiving Day, so New York must turn to Drew Lock. The Cowboys will be our premier streaming defense of the week for the first time all year.

Due to its vast ownership, this Dallas defensive unit wasn't considered to be in the streaming range early on in the season. But fantasy managers may have moved on when star Micah Parsons was lost to a high ankle sprain in September and started streaming well before quarterback Dak Prescott tore his hamstring before Week 10.

Dallas unsurprisingly dropped below our 60% ownership despite Parsons returning to the lineup two weeks ago. The Cowboys are ninth in sack rate (8.9%) and sixth in pressure rate (36.6%) since Parsons was active the previous three weeks.

That's an improvement from a sack rate of 7.4% and a 34.4% pressure rate in Weeks 5-9 without Parsons. The Giants are in the top half of the league in sack rate (7.8%), pressure rate (32.6%) and QB Hit rate (18.4%) this season. Moreover, having some fantasy implications on Thanksgiving Day is fun, right?

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#2 Washington Commanders Defense vs. Tennessee Titans

Washington Commanders v Philadelphia Eagles

OK, we got burned streaming this Washington defensive unit in Week 12. The biggest surprise on the slate was seeing the Cowboys come into Landover and take out this upstart Commanders team. We may have overplayed the Dan Quinn revenge game angle and should know better by now that in-division matchups tend to be tighter than blowouts.

However, we're returning to the well against one of our favorite targets of the year in this Tennessee offense led by turnover prince Will Levis. Granted, Levis has been better in the previous two weeks, with 573 yards combined against Minnesota and Houston. But with his pick-6 against the Texans last Sunday, the second-year quarterback has thrown an interception in every game but one this season.

Up front, the Titans offensive line is a unit to steam against this season, as it has allowed the highest sack rate in the league (10.3%), seventh-highest pressure rate (32.9%) and the second-highest QB Hit rate (19.8%).

It's no mystery that Quinn prefers to bring the heat on opposing quarterbacks with a 28.2% blitz rate, but the league has been trending to playing coverage with Levis's inaccuracies.

Levis has faced the seventh-highest zone coverage (56.4%) while facing the fourth fewest blitz rates (23.1%). So, will Quinn continue to stay true to his tendencies or trend closer to how other teams played Levis this year?

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#3 Tampa Bay Buccaneers Defense vs. Carolina Panthers

NFL: SEP 29 Eagles at Buccaneers

Our No. 1 streaming defense for Week 12 is back again, but this time, it's against a divisional foe on the road. Tampa Bay came through against a poor New York Giants offense for an overall DEF5 finish.

Divisional matchups should come with a disclaimer that they tend to be closer than non-divisional matchups. But we may be comfortable with Tampa Bay's defense repeating a top-five performance once again this week.

Carolina's quarterback Bryce Young turned in his best performance last week against a formidable Kansas City defense. Young's 263 yards passing was the second-most of his career, and only the second time, he went over 250 passing yards in 23 career games.

Carolina is an offense we're targeting, as the Panthers have the fewest passing yards in the league (2,072), the fewest yards per attempt (5.9) and the fifth-fewest completion percentage (62.6%).

With the third-worst time to throw (2.5), coach Dave Canales has devised a plan to get the ball out of Young's hand as quickly as possible. Carolina is last in pressure rate (21%), 28th in sack rate (5.1%) and 26th in QB Hit rate (11.3%). That could be problematic in accumulating sacks for Tampa Bay, so we will need to create turnovers to stay in the top 12 defense this week.