The Worksheet: Week 5 Fantasy Football, All You Need To Know

Welcome to Week 5 of The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar.

What is The Worksheet from Rich Hribar?

The Worksheet is a comprehensive weekly fantasy football preview for each NFL game. Rich Hribar analyzes the matchups for every notable fantasy player for every game every week of the NFL season.

Week 5 Fantasy Football Matchups

Things move fast in the NFL.

Although we are still in the building phase for the full season, we are already in October.

Nearly a third of the fantasy regular season has come and gone.

Hopefully, you are sitting in a good place for four weeks and survived more of the carnage that happened in Week 4.

Malik Nabers and Tyreek Hill are lost for the season.

Lamar Jackson, Ricky Pearsall, and Darnell Mooney all exited last week with injuries.

We had more offensive line injuries.

Joe Alt and Kolton Miller suffered ankle injuries that are expected to keep both out for a while.

Ryan Kelly and Brian O’Neill had injuries for Minnesota.

Cesar Ruiz was lost for four to six weeks in New Orleans.

Through four weeks, the 22.2 points per game on offense are up over the previous three seasons.

That is the best we have had in Weeks 1-4 in a season since 2021.

Despite the scoring being up in total, passing yardage is hurting.

The 207.8 passing yards per team are the second-fewest to this point of a season over the past decade.

Big plays are down.

The number of offensive plays to gain 10 or more yards through four weeks is the fewest in a season since 2008.

The number of 20-yard plays is the fewest since 2008, as well.

If you are looking for positives, turnovers are way down.

We have had the fewest number of turnovers through four weeks in a season in the 2000s.

Scoring is up because kicking is once again aided by long-distance field goals being at an all-time high.

For the second season in a row, we had over 50 field goals (56 to be exact) of 50-plus yards through the opening four weeks.

That had never happened before 2024.

Four of those have been from over 60 yards out, the most ever to this point of any season.

Offenses have kicked field goals on 17.2% of the league’s drives, the highest rate at this point in any season in the 2000s.

Week 5 is the start of bye weeks.

We have already been adjusting and calibrating rosters to account for injuries, early-season breakouts, and busts.

Now, the Packers, Bears, Falcons, and Steelers are all off this week.

We also have another International Game this weekend, between the Browns and the Vikings.

Ensure your roster is updated for that early kickoff on Sunday morning.

We had another early inactive last week in Jaylen Warren, so don’t get caught off guard or sleeping in.

We are now fleshing out a real sample of what we have on a team basis.

We are developing trends while revealing some early-season myths.

The more information we acquire, the more robust our evidence-based approach can be.

We also have a ton of football left to go.

There will be several things that we believe we have learned from the opening month that we will look back on with a side eye.

A year ago at this time, Jayden Reed was the WR4 in overall scoring.

Chris Godwin, Rashee Rice, and Stefon Diggs were WR1 scorers before suffering injuries.

Diontae Johnson, Rashid Shaheed, and Allen Lazard were WR2 scorers.

Dallas Goedert was the TE1 overall, while Cole Kmet and Mike Gesicki were TE1 scorers.

Zack Moss was a top-20 running back.

We still have a long way to go, despite some teams starting slowly, likely feeling the squeeze.

This article will be updated throughout the week to reflect major news or injury implications.

I encourage you to use the game-by-game tables and data points here in conjunction with the player rankings that will be available every Wednesday.

Enjoy the games!

Click the matchups below for the individual game previews.

Week 5 Fantasy Football Matchups