Drafting the best defenses in the NFL

Welcome to The Athletic Football Show.

I'm Robert Mays.

We are drafting some defenses today.

Instead of just doing a top 10 list of defenses, we thought this would just be a more fun way to do it.

We'll get into the specifics of the rules as I g- go through the intro with Dave and Derek, but pretty simple, that's what we're doing today.

We are drafting, me, Dave, and Derek, the top 15 defenses in football for 2026.

Let's get to that discussion with the three of us right now.

[upbeat music] We're doing something a little bit different today with our best defenses ranking concept compared to what we have done in previous years.

We've done, as all p- NFL podcasts have done between June and July every single off-season, we used to rank or pick the top 10 defenses and offenses heading into the season.

For multiple reasons, I wanted to change it up a little bit.

I think this is a more fun way to do it, it's a more streamlined way to do it, and it adds some actual stakes to an exercise like this in a way that I act- I'm really looking forward to.

Welcome to The Athletic Football Show.

I'm Robert Mays.

We are drafting some defenses today.

Instead of just doing a top 10 list of defenses, we thought this would just be a more fun way to do it.

We'll get into the specifics of the rules as I g- go through the intro with Dave and Derek, but pretty simple, that's what we're doing today.

We are drafting, me, Dave, and Derek, the top 15 defenses in football for 2026.

Let's get to that discussion with the three of us right now.

[upbeat music] We're doing something a little bit different today with our best defenses ranking concept compared to what we have done in previous years.

We've done, as all p- NFL podcasts have done between June and July every single off-season, we used to rank or pick the top 10 defenses and offenses heading into the season.

For multiple reasons, I wanted to change it up a little bit.

I think this is a more fun way to do it, it's a more streamlined way to do it, and it adds some actual stakes to an exercise like this in a way that I act- I'm really looking forward to.