Cooper Kupp, Jonathan Taylor and Jameson Williams are potentially making their season debuts this week, just to name a few. The first two — Kupp and Taylor — complicate the fantasy situation for their teammates — and beyond these potential debuts, there are numerous key players who are shaping up to be game-time decisions for Week 5 in the NFL.
It’s important to remember that this early in the week, these tiers and rankings are meant to give us a rough idea of how to start game planning, but we aren’t making start/sit decisions involving players like Zack Moss or Tutu Atwell yet because their ultimate rank will come down to whether Taylor and Kupp are active. It’s difficult to project and rank situations like this — all we can really do is make our best guess.
For Week 5, I opted to update my running back upside chart instead of writing position-by-position player notes. I feel like this is going to be more helpful for in-season decision making and something you can’t get anywhere else.
For the preseason RB upside chart, I gave out letter grades based on a player’s ADP, their percentage chance of leapfrogging the starting RB, along with their rank when the starting RB is healthy vs. when he is out.
Ideally, we want to target players who have a chance of becoming the workhorse back without needing an injury to the starter. Also, backs who offer RB3/Flex value even when the starting RB is healthy, and potentially offer RB1/2 value if the starter were ever to miss time.
As you may recall, David Montgomery and Jaylen Warren were the A+ examples of those types of backs heading into the season.
Now that we are in-season, the way I set up the chart is a bit different. This far into the campaign, we obviously no longer have access to every player. Instead, I wanted this to be more about the percentage a running back is currently rostered in Yahoo! Leagues (just as a reference) versus what their expected rostership should be.
I ran a regression test of the various factors I project, such as percentage chance the backup can become the starter at some point and their rank when the starter is in vs. out of the lineup.
I found it interesting that rostership was highly correlated with everything except for where the RB would be ranked if the starter were ever to miss time (a critical part of my RB upside ratings). It’s important to take all of these with a grain of salt. I’m just giving a rough estimate for everything, but there are a ton of moving parts.
Let’s take a look at the top and bottom five in terms of gap between rostered percentage and expected rostered percentage.
Top 5
Tyjae Spears +26%
Chuba Hubbard +20%
Devin Singletary +18%
Rico Dowdle +17%
Latavius Murray +13%
Tyjae Spears tops the list as he’s only rostered in 24% of leagues despite having an expected rostership of 50%. Spears has outsnapped Derrick Henry in two games (their two losses), so he’s a player who may offer RB3/Flex value when they are in an expected trailing game script and if you are in a pinch on a bye-heavy week. But he also has a ton of upside if Henry were ever to miss time. He would likely become a workhorse back and offer solid RB2 value in that scenario.
Chuba Hubbard is in a similar situation where he sees enough touches to offer value even with Miles Sanders healthy but would be a low-end RB2 if Sanders were ever to miss time. There’s also a non-zero chance Hubbard could leapfrog Miles Sanders at some point this season. Sanders is also dealing with a nagging groin injury that he’s currently playing through, but could cost him some time in the future. Targeting backups when the starter is dealing with an ongoing injury like that is usually a savvy move.
Singletary, Dowdle and Murray probably won’t offer much value unless their starter goes down, but could offer RB2 value if their starter misses time. I don’t consider any of them as players you should necessarily be adding, but if you are in a deeper league, Dowdle has the most upside. He’s currently dealing with an injury himself, but he would be an interesting stash because if Tony Pollard ever misses time this season, it would likely be Dowdle who inherits most of the work. Deuce Vaughn would likely mix in as well, but his small frame likely prevents him from seeing 10+ touches on a regular basis. I would guess Dowdle would handle 15+ touches in one of the better offenses in the league.
Bottom 5
Zack Moss, -45%
Cam Akers, -43%
Dalvin Cook, -25%
Raheem Mostert, -17%
Jahmyr Gibbs, -17%
These are backs that have seen their value take a turn for the worst after four weeks (or recently), but this in no way means I think you should drop them.
Zack Moss’ value takes a huge hit with Jonathan Taylor looking like he will return to action this week. Anything can still happen in that situation but as of now, Moss has been relegated to a high-upside backup as opposed to an every-week high-end RB2 option. Cam Akers went from the starting Rams RB to Alexander Mattison’s backup. Dalvin Cook is off to a rough start and now it looks like Breece Hall is closer to 100% and ready to become the workhorse back. Raheem Mostert has played well but has been leapfrogged by rookie De’Von Achane, who deserves as many touches as he can get at this point. Jahmyr Gibbs has been leapfrogged by David Montgomery, however, those of us who used my pre-season RB upside chart knew Montgomery was the back to target in that backfield.
Zach Charbonnet is -11% because he has failed to carve out a big enough role to offer RB3/Flex value as long as Kenneth Walker is healthy. He is going to need Walker to miss time, but if he does, has one of the highest upside of all backups as he will push RB1 value. He should not be dropped if you can afford the bench space. Remember, our goal is to have as much upside on our bench as possible. Backs like Jaylen Warren, Tyler Allgeier, Zach Charbonnet, and even Elijah Mitchell have league-winning injury upside.
As always, be sure to check my updated rankings and projections before making final lineup decisions.
Let's dive into the first version of my Week 5 fantasy football tiers and rankings below.
| Fantasy Football Positional Tiers |
|---|
| Quarterbacks |
| Running Backs |
| Wide Receivers |
| Tight Ends |
| Kickers |
| Defenses |
