Week 5 is in the rearview mirror. Now, it’s Week 6, but it can pay to look ahead to Week 7 and beyond to consider the players currently on waivers you might stash. Go ahead and grab them now rather than having an all-out waiver-wire war with your fellow league mates in a few days’ time.
This column will take a look ahead each week at players rostered in less than 50% of Yahoo leagues.
Week 5 is in the rearview mirror. Now, it’s Week 6, but it can pay to look ahead to Week 7 and beyond to consider the players currently on waivers you might stash. Go ahead and grab them now rather than having an all-out waiver-wire war with your fellow league mates in a few days’ time.
This column will take a look ahead each week at players rostered in less than 50% of Yahoo leagues.
Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Stashes
We often see players under-rostered coming off bye weeks and Baker Mayfield feels like a player who could jump by 15% easily by this time next week. Mayfield has had three games over 16 points through four games, boasting a 5.6% touchdown rate, ranking ninth overall. With Mike Evans healthy again, Mayfield can continue his hot streak.
Sam Howell is the QB14 in total points, is sixth in total passing yards, and averages the fourth most pass attempts per game (38.2), partly because the Commanders frequently find themselves needing to pass the ball more often. This has led to Howell throwing nine big-time throws, a number only bested by Matthew Stafford‘s 12. Howell’s seat might get hot later in the season, but for now, he’s likely to remain the starter for at least another month.
It hasn’t been anywhere close to what fantasy football managers might have hoped for Jaxon Smith-Njigba since he joined the Seahawks, with him totaling 18.2 points per game through four Seahawks fixtures. Smith-Njigba is averaging a pathetically low 3.3 air yards per target and isn’t seeing close to the volume required to turn that into a PPR-relevant score, or at least he hasn’t so far.
Year after year, we see rookies experience a post-bye-week bump in their usage, and with the Seahawks coming off a bye week, it shouldn’t surprise us if we see Smith-Njigba utilized better. The Seahawks play the Bengals in a spicy Week 6 matchup, and if Smith-Njigba is getting better looks and more frequently so, he’ll be a hot name for waiver columns in a few days’ time.
Terry McLaurin and Jahan Dotson should be dominating Sam Howell’s targets, but instead, they are struggling to separate from Curtis Samuel, who boasts a 16.4% target share, right between McLaurin’s 18.1% and Dotson’s 15.5%. Samuel has seen 15 targets in the last two games, and it’s not all shallow-easy completion passes. He’s also seen two deep targets in the last three weeks. Samuel has turned this target share into back-to-back performances of 18 PPR points, finishing as a top 15 wide receiver in weeks four and five. With the Commanders unlikely to be in control in most games, betting on pass-heavy outcomes seems sensible.
The Titans are hovering around the line of messy teams, bouncing back and forth between gutsy performances and messy ones. In games where the team has a lead, Derrick Henry frequently plays more of the snaps than rookie Tyjae Spears, but over the last three games, we’re steadily seeing Spears get more involved, with his snap share jumping to 36% in that period compared to 22% in the first two weeks.
Spears is also one of only three running backs to boast 4 or more targets in four games this year and, in Week 5, had 32 snaps to Henry’s 37. Sooner or later, Spears is going to get the larger workload, and if Henry was to be traded, it would be wheels up for the impressive rookie.
On Friday, Khalil Hebert was placed on injured reserve, meaning he’ll miss at least the next four games. Meanwhile, Roschon Johnson will miss at least Week 6 due to a concussion. It’s likely that when Johnson is healthy, Foreman can hope for, at best, a 50/50 split with the impressive rookie, but that shouldn’t be sniffed at in a run-first offense, which needs to take some of the pressure off their quarterback at times. We’ve seen Foreman be a productive runner on bad teams before, and there’s no reason he can’t do it again.
It’s been a poor start to the season for Gerald Everett, who is yet to break double-digit PPR points this season, but with Mike Williams on injured reserve, it’s entirely possible that the Chargers come out of their bye week and need to return to what worked in 2022, which featured a reasonable level of Gerald Everett. There’s not much hope to cling to here, but the Chargers face potential shootouts with the Cowboys and Chiefs before easy matchups against the Bears and Jets.
Cleveland Browns – 27% Rostered
Coming off a Week 4 bye after an embarrassing performance against the Ravens, the Browns face a brutal matchup with the San Francisco 49ers, but regardless of the offense’s misery, the defense looks like an elite unit. Through five weeks, the Browns rank first in defensive DVOA, bring quarterback pressure at the second-highest rate, and have averaged 3.0 sacks per game. There’s also a lot to be said for having a plug-and-play defense. You won’t have to sub out for the rest of the season.
