Here come the Bye Weeks and the scrambling begins. Waiver wire activity is peaking and now it’s time for you to shine. Here are Week 5’s surprising fantasy football trends and what you need to help you separate yourself from the pack in Week 6.
(If you’d like to check the fantasy trends through Week 4, you can find it here.)
The Bills D is plug-and-play.
I’m in a league that employs DST and this week an owner dropped the Buffalo Bills D. I understand the thought process 100%. Ryan Tannehill, Derrick Henry, AJ Brown, and Julio Jones pack a potential fantasy football knockout punch. But when you look closely, it really is not that scary.
The Bills have given up the fewest fantasy points to quarterbacks (12.4 avg), running backs (9.8 avg), and wide receivers (13.2 avg). And if you look even further down the schedule, the Bills have some extremely favorable matchups that will help their owners into the playoffs and beyond. I so wanted to reach out to the dude that dropped the Bills to tell him all of this but instead, I scooped them up myself off waivers and plugged them into my DST slot against him.
Matt Judon is balling out.
Sticking on the D side of the ball, Matt Judon is someone to target. The LB/DL of the New England Patriots not only leads the NFL in sacks, but he is also stuffing fantasy stat sheets. Definitely worth some waiver/trade moves for your IDP team.
More than just a sighting of Pitts.
For many Kyle Pitts owners, last week’s coming out party against the New York Jets was joyous and triumphant. But were those 26.90 fantasy points the peak of his production in 2021? No. The Falcons lead the NFL in targets to their TEs with 59, or almost 12 per game. There is more time for Pitts to eat this fantasy season.
Know your strength of schedule.
We are getting to the point in the season where you need to start planning for the future, rather than just week to week. And looking at a team’s strength of schedule, basically how hard or easy their remaining games statistically stack up, is what winners do.
Looking strictly at QBs, players like Kyler Murray, Josh Allen, and Matthew Stafford statistically have the easiest remaining schedules while Justin Herbert, Lamar Jackson, and Tom Brady have the hardest.
Do what you will with that.
Is your RB “touchdown-dependent?”
Anxiety is defined in fantasy football as those last few moments of a game in which you pray to whatever gods that your RB finds the endzone to at least make his projection. Touchdown-dependent backs are a pain in the ass but alas, are a fact of our lives currently.
We all have them.
Here is the list of the worst offenders through our Week 5 fantasy trends so you can make an informed decision (psst…trade them). The percentages represent the portion of the player’s fantasy points that are through touchdowns.
James Conner 56%
Josh Jacobs 52%
Latavius Murray 50%
Darrel Williams 45%
Chris Carson 43%
To give some context to these numbers, Derrick Henry, the RB fantasy leader by a mile, generates only 35% of his fantasy points by finding paydirt. Find yourself a back that has some balance to their fantasy point-scoring.
Better have a Plan B.
Injuries have forever been part of fantasy football but this season seems to be particularly brutal with stars getting injured. Week 5 saw the loss of Saquon Barkley (again), Russell Wilson, and Clyde Edwards Helaire. Handcuffs usually are a ticket to jail but in fantasy football, handcuffs can be the ticket to eternal glory.
There are arguments for and against having running back handcuffs but for educational purposes, here are the top five ranked (standard) fantasy running backs that may just win you a title if you can secure their services:
Kareem Hunt 17th
Melvin Gordon III 27th
Tony Pollard 28th
Zack Moss 31st
Jamaal Williams 34th
All the best in Week 6 and I hope you crush it again.
