![\"Foyesade](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/GettyImages-2255720308.jpg\")
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JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA – JANUARY 11: Foyesade Oluokun #23 of the Jacksonville Jaguars runs out prior to the AFC Wild Card Playoff game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Buffalo Bills at EverBank Stadium on January 11, 2026 in Jacksonville, Florida. (Photo by Megan Briggs\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n
The Jacksonville Jaguars<\/a> have a solid defense and special teams when it pertains to a choice in a fantasy football league.<\/p>\n But the reality is that if you want to wait on the D\/ST position in your draft, the Jags become a must-draft sleeper.<\/p>\n The reason is actually simple: Their schedule to open the season looks exactly like you\u2019d want it to.<\/p>\n And with the season just around the corner, there\u2019s no need to overthink this.<\/p>\n Why Jaguars D\/ST Is Obvious Sleeper<\/p>\n If you aren\u2019t going to take a defense and just keep them the whole fantasy football season, the D\/ST planning becomes all about matchups.<\/p>\n And boy oh boy, do the Jaguars<\/a> have a great matchup in Week 1 or what?<\/p>\n They welcome the Cleveland Browns<\/a> to Jacksonville.<\/p>\n Yep, the Browns whose quarterback battle this offseason was a lose-lose proposition between Deshaun Watson and Shedeur Sanders.<\/p>\n The same Browns who replaced essentially their entire offensive line this season, and still no one is quite sure if it\u2019s any good \u2014 all anyone knows for sure is that it doesn\u2019t have a lot of continuity as a unit.<\/p>\n And yeah, the same Browns whose passing game will depend in large part on a pair of rookie WRs who should be good eventually but will be playing their first regular season NFL<\/a> game on Sunday, Sept. 13.<\/p>\n Watson doesn\u2019t have the arm talent, or the leg talent, that he used to. He\u2019s a turnover waiting to happen. Even when he doesn\u2019t give the ball to the other team, it seems unlikely he\u2019ll be moving it very much himself.<\/p>\n There\u2019s something comforting about playing a D\/ST in fantasy football with a beautiful matchup like the Browns. So if you can get the Jags late in your fantasy draft, you\u2019ve got to do it.<\/p>\n Jaguars\u2019 Schedule After Week 1<\/p>\n If you take the Jags, you\u2019ll probably be fully committed to the plan of streaming defenses based on matchup, but that\u2019s fine. If you can get the team playing the Browns or the Jets<\/a> most weeks, you\u2019re probably doing just fine.<\/p>\n The Jaguars are conceivably playable in Week 2 against the Denver Broncos<\/a>, who are a solid team but won\u2019t necessarily light up the scoreboard.<\/p>\n It starts to get tricky in Weeks 3 and 4, though, when the Jags take on the Patriots<\/a> and Bengals.<\/p>\n The Browns take on the Buccaneers<\/a> in Week 2, for what it\u2019s worth, and the Bucs D\/ST isn\u2019t frequently drafted near the top of the board. You might just be able to \u201cBrowns hop\u201d your way at the D\/ST spot in your fantasy football lineup. And then the Carolina Panthers<\/a> in Week 3 would have a chance to be available against Cleveland, too, as long as you\u2019re ahead of your leaguemates on this strategy, maybe by picking up the next D\/ST on the Sunday beforehand so they don\u2019t ever make it to the next week\u2019s waiver claims.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\tBilly Heyen<\/a> Billy Heyen is a Heavy contributor with focus on the NFL and MLB. He is a 2019 graduate of Syracuse University who spent his senior year following Jim Boeheim’s basketball team around the country. His reporting work has also included extensive work for The Sporting News, the Sandusky Register and Rochester’s Democrat & Chronicle. Adventures in sports writing have also led to in-person coverage of the Buffalo Sabres, Cleveland Guardians, U.S. men’s national soccer team and a variety of minor league baseball stories. More about Billy Heyen<\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Getty JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA – JANUARY 11: Foyesade Oluokun #23 of the Jacksonville Jaguars runs out prior to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":993598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2060],"tags":[7,212,125,2401,213,6],"class_list":["post-993597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-football","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-jaguars","tag-jacksonvillejaguars","tag-jaguars","tag-nfl"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/117225475988454307","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=993597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/993597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/993598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=993597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=993597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=993597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}