Week Five Rankings
Week five is here and after the quarter mark of the fantasy football season Antonio Brown and Julio Jones have moved up to the top three conversation in PPR leagues while rookie Jeremy Hill and Lorenzo Taliaferro have looked better than the first running back drafted in the 2014 NFL draft in Bishop Sankey. Larry Donnell has rescued Eli Manning from the fantasy scrapheap and Kelvin Benjamin has exceeded all expectations and is now a borderline WR1. Of course as we all know Ray Rice was released, Adrian Peterson was placed on the NFI list and RGIII was injured yet again.
But enough with the review, lets get to the week five fantasy landscape.
At wide receiver Antonio Brown and Jordy Nelson have looked like two of the most consistent elite plays and are number two and three in our rankings for week five. Demaryius has dropped to seventh as he has not looked like himself lately and has an unenviable matchup with Patrick Peterson on the slate for this weekend. Though mental lapses still seem to be an issue Kelvin Benjamin is ranked 14th overall for standard formats due to his weekly TD upside and Steve Smith is a top-15 option simply because he is facing single coverage weekly and Joe Flacco loves to target him in the passing game due to his crisp route running and explosiveness. Odell Beckham and Marvin Jones will make their debuts this week while Pierre Garcon and Larry Fitzgerald are no more than low end WR2 options this week.
At running back Demarco Murray is making his case as the best running back in the NFL and is running behind a solid offensive line in Dallas. At the other end of the spectrum popular RB2 choice Toby Gerhart is showing that he is nothing more than the middling below average runner that some of us thought he was. In standard leagues TD upside cannot be overstated and rookies like Jeremy Hill, Andre Williams, Lorenzo Taliaferro and Isaiah Crowell are more valuable than one may think though their weekly workload will be inconsistent as backups.
At quarterback Kirk Cousins has been exposed as a poor mans Tony Romo and is our 27th ranked QB this week after being a recommended start last week. Terry Bridgewater guided the Vikings to a win in week four and has opened up the running game with his mobility in and out of the pocket. Nick Foles now has twice as many interceptions as he had all last season but is still a solid QB streamer in Chip Kelly’s offense. Ben Roethlisberger is ranked as a QB1 at 11th overall with an easy date against the Jaguars on the schedule while Tom Brady is no more than a QB2 option as Josh McDaniels has let his ego take over again and hurt his football team. Brady is no more than a streamer/bye week filler until his receivers get it going.
At tight end Larry Donnell is now a legit TE1 option though we expect his targets to take a hit by week six with rookie Odell Beckham set to make his debut for the Giants. Martellus Bennett has emerged as one of the top tight end options for standard leaguers as well as PPR leagues and now has 29 receptions on 37 targets; Delanie Walker is right behinnd him with 32 targets and 22 receptions.
And without further adieu, here are our rankings for week five of the 2014 fantasy football season.
