With Week 6 in the books, we are now a third of the way through the fantasy football season. Each week, it gets harder and harder to find players to stash from the waiver wire. Some players break out of stash territory with a few good performances, while others fade into complete obscurity. However, we’ve got some intriguing options this week, plus a few previously featured receivers who are still widely available and worth considering. Let’s dive right in.
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Fantasy Football Waiver Wire Stashes: WR & TE (Week 7)
Fantasy Football Wide Receiver Stashes: Week 7
Kayshon Boutte (WR – NE): 0.1% Rostered
If you’ve been reading this article, you know I was on the Ja’Lynn Polk train. However, this week, it wasn’t the rookie who led the Patriots in routes. Instead, Kayshon Boutte, a sixth-round selection from 2023, paced the team with a 76.2% route participation rate.
This is especially worth noting because the Drake Maye era has officially begun in New England. In his first NFL start, Maye passed for over 200 yards and three touchdowns, both things Jacoby Brissett failed to do once in five weeks. It might not always be pretty, but having Maye under center undeniably raises this offense’s fantasy ceiling.
This week, in Maye’s first start, Boutte caught all three of his targets for 59 yards and also scored his first NFL touchdown. It’s not great when a player catches their first touchdown in their second season, but Boutte was considered a potential first-round pick early in his college career. If he’s finally ready to make good on that potential, a No. 1 WR role on the new-look Patriots’ offense could allow him to reach fantasy relevance.
JuJu Smith-Schuster (WR – KC): 24.9% Rostered
Arguably, JuJu Smith-Schuster shouldn’t even count as a waiver wire stash. In his first game without Rashee Rice, the former Pro Bowler racked up 130 yards on seven catches. However, fantasy managers are skeptical of the 27-year-old’s ability to be a reliable fantasy contributor. The Chiefs were on bye this week, so Smith-Schuster’s breakout game happened a week (and multiple waiver runs) ago, but he is still rostered in under a quarter of leagues.
With that in mind, Smith-Schuster is worth adding and holding until we see how the Chiefs’ offense shakes out long-term with Rice now officially out for the season. After all, it was just two years ago that the veteran slot receiver posted over 100 targets and 900+ yards on this same Kansas City offense. He’s not playing the full “Rashee Rice role,” but Smith-Schuster has a real shot to be a valid Flex play or even a PPR WR2 as long as he’s seeing a 20% target share from Patrick Mahomes.
Previously-Featured WRs To Consider
Jalen Tolbert (WR – DAL): 37.3% Rostered
After a big Week 5, Jalen Tolbert came back to Earth with four catches for 43 yards on Sunday. But he still led the Cowboys in routes, even above CeeDee Lamb. If Dallas ever gets it together, he will benefit.
Xavier Legette (WR – CAR): 24.0% Rostered
Xavier Legette scored his second career touchdown on Sunday, catching three of his four targets for 23 yards. An explosive first-round rookie running plenty of routes on an offense with only one established target. He is perhaps the most prototypical stash candidate possible.
Adonai Mitchell (WR – IND): 9.2% Rostered
Another explosive rookie with high draft capital, Adonai Mitchell doesn’t yet have the route participation part of the breakout formula, as he ran just nine routes on Sunday. That’s discouraging for his short-term outlook, but it also means his fantasy value has room to grow. For the season, Mitchell has an elite 32% target per route run rate — we don’t want to extrapolate too much from small samples, but it’s a sign he could finish the season very strong if he ever earns a full role.
Fantasy Football Tight End Stashes: Week 7
Taysom Hill (TE – NO): 28.0% Rostered
After a red-hot start to the season, everything is going wrong for the Saints. They are set to be without Derek Carr for multiple weeks. Both Chris Olave (concussion) and Rashid Shaheed (knee) are also dealing with injuries. Taysom Hill has also missed each of the last two weeks with a rib injury.
However, with all of these offensive injuries, Hill’s unique package could expand. He may even see a few snaps at quarterback, like in the good old days. Hill’s injuries have made it hard to determine exactly how much Klint Kubiak plans on utilizing him, but he has seen solid involvement when healthy in competitive game scripts, especially by the goal line. That is enough to make him worth stashing if you’re hurting at tight end.
Hunter Henry (TE – NE): 22.2% Rostered
Like Boutte before him, Hunter Henry makes this list thanks to the Maye factor. While he’s no longer leading the Patriots in targets, like he was early in the season, the veteran tight end did finish with 11.6 half-PPR points on Sunday, catching three out of five targets for 41 yards and a score.
I’m not a big fan of the “rookie quarterbacks lean on tight ends” narrative, but perhaps it could do some work for us here. Henry is arguably the Patriots’ most consistent pass-catcher, and Maye is going to throw the ball around more than Brissett did. In a tight end landscape where true breakouts come around about once per year, perhaps Maye helping the 29-year-old to back-end TE1 numbers is all we can hope for.
Ja’Tavion Sanders (TE – CAR): 0.7% Rostered
If you want to swing for the fences, Ja’Tavion Sanders is the tight end to do it with. A fourth-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft, the former Texas Longhorn has the potential to be a mismatch nightmare. With Tommy Tremble sidelined by a concussion, Sanders set a new career-high in route participation rate this week, running a route on 70% of Andy Dalton‘s dropbacks. He did well on those routes, too, finishing second to only Diontae Johnson with seven targets (an 18.4% target share). Of those seven targets, Sanders caught five, finishing with 49 yards, including 26 yards after the catch.
Don’t get me wrong, this is a longshot. Sanders averaged just a 34.7% route participation rate over the first four weeks with Tremble healthy. There’s a chance that the veteran returns next week and immediately relegates him to complete irrelevance. Even if that doesn’t happen, it’s not like Sanders’ 7.4 half-PPR points this week lit the world on fire. But there simply aren’t that many tight ends with upside out there, and I can’t just keep featuring Erick All Jr. every week. Sanders is worth a shot in deep formats.
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Ted Chmyz is a fantasy football contributor for FantasyPros.com. Find him on Twitter @Tchmyz for more fantasy content or to ask questions.