10 D/ST sleepers to target for fantasy football in Week 3

As you finalize your fantasy football lineups for Week 3, here are 10 D/ST sleepers to target.

It’s already Week 3 on the 2021 NFL schedule, and the third time we have to set fantasy football lineups.

As always, many of these 10 team defense sleepers will be available in your league and make sense as streaming options for the Sunday games or the Monday night game. The remainder are owned in a greater percentage of leagues, but have a matchup that has sneaky potential.

Here are my 10 D/ST fantasy sleepers for Week 3.

Fantasy Football: 10 D/ST sleepers for Week 3

10. Chicago Bears at Cleveland Browns

It’s odd to think of the Bears D/ST as a fantasy sleeper. But this is not the same unit as just a couple of years ago, and the first two weeks of the season have been very bad (Rams-Week 1) and pretty good (Bengals-Week 2). Hence why they are available in 72 percent of Yahoo! leagues and 86.7 percent of ESPN leagues (as of Thursday morning).

The Browns will be without wide receiver Jarvis Landry on Sunday, and if Odell Beckham (knee) plays he will probably be on a limited snap count.  So the weakness of Chicago’s defense, the secondary beyond cornerback Jaylon Johnson, is not in line to be burned this week.

9. Cleveland Browns vs. Chicago Bears

Bears/Browns has one of the lower over-unders on the Week 3 slate (45.5), so the other side of the matchup is a fantasy defense sleeper too. Cleveland’s defense hasn’t been great thus far, but they can put heat on the quarterback and the Bears’ offensive line is suspect.

The Bears will also have rookie quarterback Justin Fields making his first NFL start on Sunday. While he could be very good, especially from a fantasy perspective, he’s making his first start and Matt Nagy may put some shackles on him.