Week 5 saw plenty of fantasy football production that was left on the waiver wire.
I’ll bring up four players here that are on a combined 13% of redraft leagues (per ESPN), and ask the question: after these players blew up in Week 5, are they worth a roster spot in 12-team leagues?
Mason Taylor, TE New York Jets
Week 5: 9 catches, 12 targets, 67 yards
The son of Hall Of Fame defensive lineman Jason Taylor has plenty of people watching out for the rookie second-round pick’s ascendance, and he hasn’t been disappointing so far. Twelve targets in week 5 against the Cowboys makes it a combined 25 targets over the last three weeks, as Taylor looks to be playing the part of someone the Jets were hoping would add offensive firepower to a tight end room that hasn’t seen one get over 100 targets since Dustin Keller in 2015.
While it isn’t optimal that he has one of the most run-heavy quarterbacks in the league in Justin Fields as his play-caller, there are a couple of things that help counteract that to pave a potential path to legitimate fantasy relevance. Besides Garrett Wilson, no one else in the WR and TE rooms have made any better case to be Fields’ number 2 option than Taylor, and that’s not surprising, considering the Jets went into the season with a 30-year old Josh Reynolds in line to be their WR2.
New York’s defense hasn’t been good, allowing 31.4 points-per-game, forcing continuous negative game scripts that have forced the Jets to throw. There’s really no reason to expect that to change and with that, Taylor becomes more than a streamer you can expect to be available on waiver wires. Expect at least one manager in your league to take a shot on him sooner rather than later, another week with a decent target share or even his first TD of the season and someone’s going to scoop him up. If you’re one of those teams with a shaky TE room, maybe that manager should be you.
Should Mason Taylor be rostered? Yes.
Ryan Flournoy, WR Dallas Cowboys
Week 5: 6 catches, 9 targets, 114 yards, 2 rushes, 10 yards
It took not just Ceedee Lamb but also receiver/kick returner KaVontae Turpin being out for Flournoy to get his chance, but he ended up outproducing assumed WR2 Jalen Tolbert as well as George Pickens, who saw 57 yards and a score but on only two catches.
His first game with only three targets, is it possible Flournoy has earned himself WR3 consideration for the Cowboys? Not only does Turpin have an established role as kick/punt returner when he’s active, he’s all of only 153 pounds. The Cowboys might be wise not to put too much weight on his shoulders, considering how size concerns have led to injury troubles like that of Tank Dell with the Texans, who even comes in twelve pounds heavier than Turpin.
It’s very speculative, yes, but Turpin has gone to the Pro Bowl twice for his return abilities and I’m sure Dallas finds that valuable enough that if what Flournoy put on tape is worth more playing time, they’d have no problem giving it to him, and linking him with a QB in Dak Prescott who has been keeping the offense humming through receiver and offensive line injuries.
Unfortunately, after only one week, what fantasy manager is going to have even more of a dart throw on their roster to release back into the wild to make room for Flournoy? The second-year, sixth-round rookie out of Southeast Missouri doesn’t have draft capital or big school pedigree to try and link to his name either that this is signaling an emergence. There’s just not enough there yet.
Should Ryan Flournoy be rostered? No.
AJ Barner, TE Seattle Seahawks
Week 5: 7 catches, 7 targets, 53 yards, 2 touchdowns
Barner comes in as the PPR TE12 (pre-Monday Night Football) if you don’t count his two scores, fantasy’s top tight end if you do. He recorded his third and fourth TD of the season, and while rookie hype about the athletic Elijah Arroyo filled the fantasy space, Barner came in to 2025 with the Seahawks coaching staff’s trust, enough to make him the starter after feeling comfortable letting Noah Fant walk in the offseason.
The second-year pro didn’t light it up while playing college ball at Indiana and Michigan, with his highest season topping out at 249 yards his final year in ’23, but showing enough as a blocker to earn him reps then and likely now as well. One interesting tidbit in scouting reports when coming out of college include the line “scouts say he attacks practices and weight training with a single-minded obsession to get better and compete”. That was from Lance Zierlein’s NFL.com scouting report and it reeks of a “this guy’s got moxie” vibe.
When someone says “this guy’s got moxie,” what they’re usually unintentionally saying is that the guy isn’t actually that good at pro football. Josh Dobbs has moxie, the kind of moxie that made him a household name when he got off to a fresh start while filling in for the injured Kirk Cousins for the Vikings in 2023, only for that shine to dull quickly after a few weeks, losing the starting job, and not seeing one again since.
Moxie has gotten Barner this far and leaves the door open in case his career arc is following that of a more traditional tight end’s path, where it used to take more than a season or two to break out, unlike your Brock Bowers‘ or Sam LaPorta’s. But Barner’s effort came in a high-scoring affair, a 38-35 loss to the Buccaneers, and was his first game over three targets.
Elijah Arroyo has steadily been seeing more snaps since week 1, with a season-high 55 percent in week 5, and profiles as the better pass-catching tight end. Whoever is in at TE has to compete with Cooper Kupp and another rookie option in Tory Horton, whose made enough of his presence felt that there are too many viable voices among Seattle pass-catchers to trust that Barner’s big day signals a breakout campaign.
Should AJ Barner be rostered? No.
Theo Johnson, TE NY Giants
Week 5: 6 catches, 7 targets, 33 yards, 2 touchdowns
With Malik Nabers out for the year, targets are up for grabs and a rookie Jaxson Dart was willing to rely on his tight ends safety valves like rookie QBs like to do sometimes. It was actually the Giants’ TE2 Daniel Bellinger who paced the team with 52 receiving yards, on four catches, but it’s been Theo seeing much more playing time in general.
33 yards receiving isn’t much to look at, fantasy players did not go without noticing the elite athleticism Johnson brought to the table, and a game like this has some of them asking “Is it time?”
While his athletic traits are a lock, his receiving upside and blocking ability coming out of Penn State were not, which is reflected in the above graphic provided by PlayerProfiler, in his College Dominator (27th-percentile) and Breakout Age (34th-percentile). He wasn’t highly sought after as a fourth-round draft pick and never exceeded 341 yards in a season at Penn State.
Residing in an offense that appears as though it’s going to have its fair share of rookie quarterback struggles, Johnson just doesn’t profile as the type of player who can weather that kind of instability enough to be a viable fantasy option in 2025. For the sake of everyone who’s on board the hype train, I hope I’m wrong. Developing the things he can control about his game can let the natural athletic talent shine and unlock an exciting ceiling.
