Another week of fantasy football means another week of scrounging around the depths of waivers to find the DST that’ll help you win a week. And as always, the Stream Team is here for you, the ones doing the research and make those weird 3 a.m. roster pickups that bog down your phone’s notifications when you wake up. 

So let’s crack open the notebook and look at the gross DSTs that no one but us wants to use. We want upside, good matchups and good situations. I do my best to find defenses that are rostered in fewer than 30 percent of leagues (per Yahoo! Fantasy), but I do include one DST that breaks that rule this week.

Miami Dolphins

• at Colts
• Colts TT O/U: 20.5 points (8th lowest)
• Rostered in 1 percent of leagues

After the trade deadline, the Colts' wide receiver room is LaQuon Treadwell, Ashton Dulin and Deion Burks — oh, and they’re getting thrown to by a broken Daniel Jones.  Sure, they also have Tyler Warren and Jonathan Taylor, but this has gone from an offense that shouldn’t be taken seriously to an offense that is overwhelmingly laughable. 

The Dolphins defense hasn’t been good fantasy-wise or real football-wise. But if you look at their schedule, that kind of makes sense: More than half of their games have been against pretty good offenses like the Raiders, the 49ers, the Chiefs, the Bengals and the Lions. 

The Colts have been a very sad kind of bad, and now they are even more devoid of talent than they have been, so let’s take advantage of it. 

New York Giants

• vs. Commanders
• Commies TT O/U: 20.5 points (8th lowest)
• Rostered in 18 percent of leagues

It's easy to say that the Giants' defense just looks like it’s surging since they’re coming off a game against the Eagles in which they got six sacks against a backup (backup, backup, backup) quarterback. I’m not going to say that, but it would be easy to say it.

This is the Thursday night game this week, and that’s kind of important for us here: So far this season, the team that has won the TNF game has ended up having a top-10 DST for the week if the offense they’re playing is bad.

The Commanders' offense truly stinks, and the Giants’ defense is good. If you think that the Giants are going to win this game (I do), then this isn’t a bad strategy. On the flip side: New York's offense stinks and the Commanders' defense is good-ish. If you think that Washington is going to win, then use them.

Indianapolis Colts

• vs. Dolphins
• Dolphins TT O/U: 16.5 points (2nd lowest)
• Rostered in 16 percent of leagues

Over the past couple of weeks, the Dolphins offense had been getting kind of feisty, but they’re taking a mondo-sized step back now that Malik Willis has been placed on IR with a groin injury. 

Now it looks like Kyle McCord is going to be the guy. The Eagles’ 2025 sixth-round pick out of Syracuse by way of Ohio State, he ended up getting sent to their practice squad after training camp,  then he signed with the Packers in January of 2026 only to be traded to the Dolphins back in August.

He's simply not an NFL-caliber quarterback, and he’s not going to be able to run a functional offense. Yes, the Colts' defense is absolutely rotten, but anyone is going to be a good matchup against this version of Miami.

Green Bay Packers

• vs. Vikings
• Vikings TT O/U: 17.5 points (7th lowest)
• Rostered in 43 percent of leagues

There’s a very real chance that Kirk Cousins walks back into the Vikings’ facility, is totally cool with the offense and looks like Primo-Kirk. If that’s enough to scare you off of the Packers defense, I won’t argue with you.

Personally, I don’t think that it’ll look great right off the bat, and I think that’s going to get emphasized in (what should be) the game that Micah Parsons comes back from his injury. But they are rostered in a decent number of leagues, so hopefully you don’t even get to make the choice. 

Looking ahead

This week, the four teams on a bye are the Eagles, the Buccaneers, the Broncos and the Bears. The thing to remember is that Week 11 is the only bye-maggedon of the season, with six teams off — so it'll be slim pickings for DSTs.

Normally I’d say that you should only roster two DSTs if your roster is absolutely perfect and you have room, but this week is different because you need to be planning ahead at every position. If you want to target a DST that someone has dropped because they’re on a bye, you’re looking at the Bears and the Broncos. 

Chicago gets an okay New Orleans offense. The Saints are going to have to drop back a bunch (probably more than they already do), which means we can rack up sacks. Denver gets Las Vegas for Fernando Mendoza’s second career start. You have to think Vance Joseph and the gang are going to put the kid's head in a blender.