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 wide receivers on rosters in fewer than 50% of Yahoo! fantasy football leagues to wet your whistle. For you deep divers, there are two sleeper wide receivers unrostered in at least 90% of Yahoo! leagues.
Week Five Wide Receiver Sleepers
DeVante Parker at Tampa Bay (40% rostered)
I feared what a Will Fuller return would do to DeVante Parker, and it turns out I should have feared Will Fuller injuring himself again. The Dolphins placed Fuller on IR due to his hand injury, so we don’t have to worry about him for a few more weeks. Parker has 7+ targets in all four games this season and hasn’t missed a beat with Tua Tagovailoa under center for them, finishing with 4 catches for 77 yards and a touchdown last week to complete his fourth-straight game with at least four catches for 42 yards.
The Buccaneers’ defense is what we call a “pass funnel” defense due to their questionable secondary and stout run defense. They give up the most fantasy points to wide receivers on the year, and he’s Miami’s number one wide receiver, so if you don’t start DeVante Parker this week, then I don’t know when you will start DeVante Parker this year.
Hunter Renfrow versus Chicago (36% rostered)
Hunter Renfrow is an absolute beast this season, notching 10+ half-PPR fantasy points in three-of-four games while getting at least six targets in every game this year. Renfrow scored in each of the last two games and seems to be a key part of the Raiders’ offense. At worst, he won’t goose you: he has at least five catches in every single game this season, and his season-low in yardage is 45. The Bears give up the fourth-most wide receiver fantasy points on the season. There are a lot of stats to explain how bad they’ve been but I only need one: three Detroit Lions’ wide receivers notched over 10 HPPR points against them last week.
Yikes.
Van Jefferson at Seattle (8% rostered—Thursday Night Football)
It might be too late to do anything with this information once you see it… and I might already look like an idiot! But, Van Jefferson has two straight games with six targets, and he has 132 yards and a touchdown on 10 catches in those games. It doesn’t seem to be a fluke, either, as he has played on at least two-thirds of the Rams’ snaps in all four games this season, including 92% and 77% in weeks two and three. The Seahawks allow the eleventh-most fantasy points to wide receivers, including a massive game from Deebo Samuel last week who they forgot to guard for a long touchdown. Five wide receivers have over five targets against them this season, and four scored at least 14 half-PPR fantasy points against them.
Bonus: Kadarius Toney at Dallas (9% rostered)
With Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton’s week five eligibility up-in-the-air, we might see a replay of last week’s game against the Saints. On the Patreon Podcast this week, I called Toney a “chaos agent,” which he is. His routes are chaotic, his after-the-catch skills are chaotic. All told, he’s just a little bundle of chaos. I’m only recommending him if Slayton and Shepard both stay out for this one. He had nine targets last week, which he turned into six catches and 78 yards. He didn’t score, but he still looked pretty good with the football.
The Cowboys give up the third-most fantasy points to wide receivers, with luminaries like Greg Ward and Brandon Zylstra notching 7+ HPPR days against them in the last couple of weeks. Golladay will get his, but someone else usually does against Dallas, as well. If there’s no Shepard and no Slayton, then the first-round pick has a shot at it.
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