Matt Okada Yahoo Fantasy Contributor Mon, October 12, 2026 at 2:24 PM UTC · 10 min read About Our Ads Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement As I write this on Sunday night, 14 of 15 Week 5 games are in the books (with Monday night remaining) and the season is continuing to round into shape. Sort of. There were promising improvements. Concerning trends. Performances that changed our early outlook on players and teams. As always, some of these shifting perspectives will have permanent ramifications in fantasy football.
With that in mind, I've compiled another full fantasy stock report. These are the most notable risers and fallers heading into Week 6.
I was fading Bucky Irving entering the week after a troubling trend of fantasy performances, but he made me look like a fool on Thursday night. With undrafted rookie QB Jalon Daniels operating a functional offense — and the Cowboys defense continuing to struggle — Irving racked up 175 yards and two touchdowns (one rushing and one receiving).
He had a 72-yard run that somehow didn't end in paydirt, converted a goal-line carry and ran nine routes to Kenny Gainwell's 13, closing the gap from previous weeks in an encouraging way. This is the upside we know Irving possesses when the offense and game script cooperate. He's top eight among qualified running backs in rush yards over expected per carry, and he's actually averaging 2.5 yards before contact per carry, second-most behind only James Cook III (entering MNF). He's also gained 151 rushing yards after forcing a missed tackle, sixth-most at the position.
Tampa Bay should be competitive against the Steelers, Panthers, Falcons and Bears before their Week 10 bye and Irving has regained our trust as an RB2.
Maybe one day we'll learn what was wrong with Drake Maye the first three weeks of the 2026 season, but whatever it was, it's gone. After scoring more points in Week 4 (26.16) than he had in the first three games combined (21.60), Maye absolutely shredded the Raiders on Sunday. He completed 76.5% of his passes for 374 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions (for the first time this season) and added 25 yards and a TD rushing for good measure. That's a grand total of 39.46 fantasy points, narrowly trailing Josh Allen's Week 2 (40.82) for the most by any QB in a game this season.
Maye utilized a wealth of receivers, including Kyle Williams and DeMario Douglas downfield, and Rhamondre Stevenson, Efton Chism III and Eli Raridon underneath. And keep in mind, A.J. Brown is set to return soon (not to mention legitimate WR2 Mack Hollins), which could drastically improve Maye's weekly fantasy prospects. After starting the year with one TD and six interceptions, Maye now has seven TDs and just one interception since Week 4. He looks like the MVP candidate and AFC champion from last year, and could get better moving forward.
If you held on to Maye through the early horrors, congratulations — you've got a QB1.
Early in the season, it looked like George Pickens might have slipped in fantasy a bit and lost his 1B status alongside CeeDee Lamb. He'd totaled just nine catches for 68 yards entering Week 3. Then he caught seven of 11 targets for 82 yards ... before seeing just three targets in Week 4 ... but taking his two catches in that game for 75 yards. It was a whole lot of ups and downs and flashes without consistency.
Then, in a shocking loss to the Bucs on Thursday, Pickens saw 13 targets and snagged nine of them for 130 yards and a touchdown. Lamb did suffer a quad injury late in the game, so we'll need to monitor that situation to properly assess Pickens' upside. At the very least, it's clear he still has access to the WR1 production we saw most of last year. When Lamb is active, that means Pickens is a solid WR2 with a rare ceiling. If Lamb misses any time, Pickens would instantly be a high-end WR1. Either way, concerns that he might be a fantasy bust after the first couple of games quickly faded … and have now been obliterated entering Week 6.
Very few things in this world give me as much joy as Parker Washington coming through on the national (or in this case international) stage. After a couple of weeks with concerningly low target volume, and a complete bust in Week 4, the Washington hype train was looking wobbly.
The Jags' No. 1 wideout — which he clearly still is — saw nine targets in London and caught six of them for 124 yards and two touchdowns , including a brilliant one-hander with 3:20 left in the game that eventually positioned Jacksonville for a dramatic win. Even after the Week 4 stinker (one catch on three targets), Washington leads Jacksonville with a 25.4% target share and 37.1% air yards share, and has caught four of Trevor Lawrence's 10 touchdown tosses through five games. On the year, Washington is one of just five wideouts with more than 2.5 yards per route run and 4+ touchdown receptions, alongside Jaxon Smith-Njigba, CeeDee Lamb, Christian Watson and Mike Evans. A fluke game will occur for just about everyone now and then, but Washington is reaching a level where we can laugh it off and move on.
He's legitimately a fringe WR1, now and for the rest of the season.
Whatever unique and chaotic page Jameis Winston lives and plays on, Malik Nabers and Isaiah Likely appear to finally be on it. Over the last two weeks, the Giants duo has combined for 35 receptions on 52 targets for 393 yards and four touchdowns. Between the two of them, they've accounted for 64% of the targets, 69% of the receptions, 68% of the receiving yards and 67% of the receiving touchdowns for the Giants these last two games. In these two games, Nabers has averaged 21.9 fantasy points and Likely has averaged 18.5 fantasy points, and they both finished top three at their respective positions against the Commanders on Sunday. Also, Likely has now seen 8+ targets in four of five games, and Nabers is coming off back-to-back outings with 100 yards and a touchdown.
They don't have a particularly concerning matchup until well after the Week 8 bye, and as long as the Giants don't make the move to J.J. McCarthy — which seems unlikely barring a complete collapse from Winston — both should be top plays for the foreseeable future.
"Hurray, Sean Payton's taking back play-calling duties, he'll pepper Jaylen Waddle and everything will be fixed!" ... Yeah, not so much.
Waddle ended up with five targets on Sunday against the Chargers and caught just two of them for 19 yards. That is now three games with fewer than six fantasy points. It's been particularly frustrating that Waddle has alternated good and terrible games, tricking managers into thinking he's back, only to disappear again. Outside of his eight-catch, 138-yard performance against Jacksonville, Waddle has just 10 catches on 21 targets for an abysmal 66 yards in his other four games. He's scored fewer fantasy points than Kalif Raymond, Darius Cooper, Jakobi Meyers or Tre Tucker.
He simply cannot be viewed as a WR2 anymore.
Frankly, until he puts together more than one decent game in a row, I'm not confident he can be viewed as a starter anymore. Bo Nix has not been productive, the receiving pecking order in Denver has been chaotic and Waddle has not shown the catch volume or the touchdown upside to be trusted in your lineup.
He's not droppable just yet, but leave him on your bench until something changes ... if it ever does.
After scoring just 5.5 fantasy points on Sunday in a brilliant matchup with the Dolphins, Brown has now finished in single digits in three of his last four games and hasn't scored a touchdown since Week 1. He ended up seeing one fewer carry than Samaje Perine in Week 5, averaging just 3.0 yards per carry while Perine racked up 4.9 per carry. And while Brown caught three passes for 21 yards, it was Perine who caught the six-yard touchdown in the second quarter.
Brown still has at least 15 touches in every single game, and had an absurd 11 receptions in Week 4, so it's not like Brown is falling out of starting contention. But with Joe Burrow doing all the scoring for Cincinnati and Perine stealing valuable touches, Brown's ceiling has absolutely dropped entering the Week 6 bye. We'll see whether anything changes by Week 7 and beyond, but Brown is currently producing more like a low-end RB2 than a low-end RB1.
If you can trade the name value for a better player — perhaps Chuba Hubbard coming off his own bye (which essentially buys you a free week) — you might want to consider it.
Take Chase Brown and make him slightly worse across the board — you've now got Cam Skattebo. Like Brown, Skattebo has single-digit fantasy points in three of his last four games. He also hasn't topped 15 in a single game all year. Like Brown, Skattebo has had 15+ touches in every single outing, but also like Brown, he hasn't scored since Week 1 and is losing valuable snaps and touches to Tyrone Tracy Jr. and Najee Harris.
In an overtime game in which the Giants scored 27 points and had 408 yards, Skattebo managed 71 yards, but lost a fumble and never sniffed the end zone. Skattebo's 91 touches are 11th among running backs entering Monday, but his 11 red-zone touches are tied for 24th ... with Woody Marks and J.K. Dobbins.
Ultimately, just like Brown, Skattebo is too involved to be confidently benched, but simply isn't flashing the upside we remember from last season (before his injury). And it certainly doesn't help that he's averaging the third-fewest yards before contact per carry among RBs (0.1), forcing him to make all his hay after contact. For what it's worth, he does have an incredible get-right matchup with the Saints defense next week. If he can't post an RB1 performance against the team allowing the most fantasy points to running backs, it might be time to panic.
(And even if he does, you might want to capitalize and trade him off the big game.)
I swear, I'm not a broken record, but ... Ashton Jeanty is our third straight Stock Down running back struggling with an inability to find the end zone and a series of disappointingly "mid" fantasy outings as a result. Jeanty also has not scored since Week 1 — and hasn't scored at all on the ground this season — and he just logged season lows in carries (10) and rushing yards (27) in Week 5. The three catches for 50 yards he added in the Patriots' blowout are nice, and have largely kept him fantasy relevant despite concerning rushing totals, but it's very hard to be an RB1 without efficiency on the ground and touchdowns by any means.
Like Skattebo, Jeanty is struggling with very poor yards before contact (0.3), leading to an abysmal 3.3 yards per carry on the year. He hasn't logged fewer than 8.3 fantasy points in a game in 2026, but he's also scored fewer than 11 points in three of his last four games, which simply isn't enough given where he was drafted. Worst of all with Jeanty, it's hard to envision the path to consistent improvement. He's already getting bell-cow volume and was lackluster on the ground even when the Raiders offense was humming.
Once again, you may want to consider trading Jeanty off his next strong performance ... which could come against the Bills defense next week.
Source: Sport
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