Week 5 Fantasy Football Sneaky Starts & Sleepers

Oct 04, 2023

Jaleel McLaughlin fantasy football

All but the luckiest fantasy owners at some point need to find the proverbial diamond in the rough—a waiver wire or bench player capable of putting up some points in a pinch. This weekly feature is dedicated to that part of fantasy football. It's not pretty, but it's part of the game.

Our signature strength-of-schedule metric, adjusted fantasy points allowed (aFPA), is now using only 2023 data. Unlike SOS tools at other sites, we are able to adjust a defense’s fantasy points allowed by its schedule bias, so it provides a better “apples-to-apples” comparison. I’ll put the defense’s aFPA rank in parentheses below. The higher the number, the better the matchup.

Last week, several of my Sneaky Starts delivered moderate-to-big games, including Russell Wilson, Jordan Love, C.J. Stroud, Alexander Mattison, De'Von Achane, Dameon Pierce, Khalil Herbert, Nico Collins, Adam Thielen, and Tyler Higbee.

Let’s see who might surprise in Week 5. Remember, there are four teams—the Browns, Chargers, Seahawks, and Buccaneers—on bye this week.

Quarterbacks

Jordan Love, Packers (@ LV, 20)

Jordan Love is still the fantasy QB4 through four weeks. He has scored 23, 20, 24, and 18 in his four starts. Christian Watson and Aaron Jones are back, and the Packers will be looking to bounce back from a bad loss against the Lions. The Raiders have yielded an average of 2.5 touchdowns (2.0 pass, 0.5 rush) per game to enemy quarterbacks, or 20.2 fantasy points per game.