Starting around week five, sleepers start to get really weird. 0-4 teams have abandoned the season and the better teams aren’t scouring the waiver wire yet. It’s a nice little lull, a pat on the head from the fantasy football gods for a month’s worth of hard work. With that in mind, these are three quarterbacks on rosters in fewer than 50% of Yahoo! fantasy football leagues to wet your whistle. Also, both of these “sleeper quarterbacks” currently rank in the top-12 at the position, so you should snatch them up, regardless. For you deep divers, there’s one sleeper quarterback who has two good performances sandwiching two duds, and who is unrostered in more than 90% of leagues.
Week Five Sleeper Quarterbacks
Sam Darnold versus Philadelphia (48% rostered)
I don’t know if we can call the #5 quarterback on the season a “sleeper,” but I guarantee he should be rostered in more leagues than not, and that isn’t the case. He has a chance to fall on his face this week, and I prefer Daniel Jones more, but I feel like something needs to be said about Darnold. He can’t sustain what he’s done, but he’s doing it, so ride it while you can. He has four rushing touchdowns in the last two games and hit paydirt on 25% of his rushes so far this season. Why Is this unsustainable? Well, he leads the entire NFL in rushing touchdowns, on 20 attempts. As of right now, he’s one of seven quarterbacks with double-digit touchdowns, so ride the wave.
Darnold gets Philly this week, who are a neutral matchup on paper. In reality, Matt Ryan ate you-know-what against them in week one, and the 49ers ran the ball as much as humanly possible in week two. They gave up 52.8 fantasy points in the last two weeks, and are trending the wrong way.
Daniel Jones at Dallas (34% rostered)
The Dallas Cowboys defense has given up at least 22.5 fantasy points to three of four quarterbacks to face them, and rank as the fourth-best matchup this week against quarterbacks. Darnold will throw an interception—Trevon Diggs will make sure of it—but that shouldn’t dampen your feelings unless you get a massive negative point hit for picks. The Cowboys pick off opposing quarterbacks twice per game, but they’ve allowed at least 330 total yards to every quarterback to face them, and yield 2.75 touchdowns per game to quarterbacks, including four total touchdowns in both weeks one four. Daniel Jones has seemingly figured it out, averaging 23.8 fantasy points per game this season. He pulled his head out of his rear-end, with just two turnovers on the season (and one was a time-expiring Hail Mary at the end of the first half last week).
Jones might be the next dual-threat guy to put it all together, and you can get him in two-thirds of leagues.
Zach Wilson at Atlanta (9% rostered)
So far, we have a four-game Zach Wilson sample size. Against two just okay-to-bad defenses (Carolina and Tennessee), he averages 278 passing yards, two touchdowns, and an interception. Against two good-to-great defenses, he averages 185 passing yards and three interceptions. So, we know what Wilson can do (beat up on bad defenses) and what he can’t do (anything against good defenses). This week, he gets the Atlanta Falcons. The Falcons allow the third-most fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks. Three of the four QBs to face them walked away with at least 27.9 fantasy points, and one of them was Taylor Heinicke, who went for 333 total yards, 3 touchdowns, and zero picks last week. Things are bad in Atlanta, so lean into that. The Jets could walk out of this one 2-3 with a statement game from Wilson.
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