Welcome to my ranking of the top 100 Individual Defensive Players for 2021 fantasy football. I’ve based the rankings on Sleeper’s standard defensive scoring, and on the potential returns over a minimum three-year period, so you may want adjust for other scoring settings and if you’re playing IDP in redraft leagues.

The top of the rankings are inevitably dominated by linebackers when using these scoring settings, where you earn 2 points per tackle and 1 per assisted tackle, and that meant 21 of the top 25 scoring defensive players last year had a linebacker designation. I’m slightly less linebacker driven, but still have 19 of my current top 25 playing that position. The flip side is the defensive tackle position, where just two finished in the top 125 defensive players in 2020 (Aaron Donald and DeForest Buckner), and I currently have the same two doing the same this year.

I will look to update these rankings regularly to account for injuries and roster changes that give anyone a bump for the 2021 season, but these rankings should hopefully provide a valuable starting point for any player valuations for the season ahead.

Last updated: 7/24/21