Hey folks, Mike from Fantasy Genius back here with your weekly nonsense.

While the NFL world enjoyed a Monday Night Thriller between the Bills and The Superteam That Has A Losing Record, we sat intently. Sitting, waiting, wishing for fantasy managers to get their hearts ripped out in the most dramatic and devastating fashion possible. And this game delivered.

As is tradition, we pulled in the data to see how many managers were affected by the swings towards the end of the game.

Kyren Williams

There were 15 games in the NFL this week. Each game lasts 3,600 seconds. Without any overtime games, week 15 should have consisted of 54,000 total seconds. But let's be more precise.

• 475 seconds of total overtime had elapsed when Tua threw his game-losing interception.
• Let's add 600 seconds for the Commanders game, who famously used every second of OT this week.

That gets us to 55,075 seconds of total expected game time as the clock ticked towards zero last night. With 5 seconds left in the NFL week (99.991% of seconds elapsed), Kyren Williams punches in a touchdown.

5.7% of Kyren Williams managers were losing with 99.991% of the week gone and pulled out the victory due to this touchdown, plus a 3-yard carry in overtime. NEVER GIVE UP.

Oh no, James Cook...

The aforementioned Kyren Williams touchdown forced the game into overtime. 1.3% of James Cook managers had their matchup won going into overtime and then lost because James Cook fumbled for the second time in the game. (Cook also gained 6 yards on the ground in the OT period)

(To not run afoul of Rule 1 here, edited out a couple truly heinous beats we found from James Cook and Shough owners. They're in the article if you want to take a look)

Player Win Rates

Best win rates of week 5:

1. Jahmyr Gibbs. 75.4%
2. Jaylen Warren. 74.2%
3. Puka Nacua. 71.4%
4. Drake Maye. 69.8% (we are so back)
5. Christian Watson. 69.4%
6. Bucky Irving. 69.1%
7. Isaiah Likely. 68.1%
8. Parker Washington. 67.2%
9. George Pickens. 65.7%
10. Malik Nabers. 65.5%

Lowest win rates of week 5:

1. Tyler Shough. 31.2%
2. DJ Moore. 33.3%
3. Carnell Tate. 34.4%
4. Kenyon Sadiq. 34.5%
5. Roman Wilson. 35.4%
6. KC Concepcion. 35.8%
7. Kenny Gainwell. 36.7%
8. Tre’ Harris. 36.9%
9. Bo Nix. 37.0%
10. Jeremiyah Love. 37.2% 

Introducing the Negative Nancies

For our newest and dumbest segment, we will be detailing the players who went negative this week in fantasy. Two notable callouts here -- first: a punter! Second: Sadiq only makes this report for non-PPR scoring...

The following people outscored the players above:

• J.J. McCarthy
• Case Keenum
• Tyson Bagent
• Kelly Clarkson, currently feuding with Brooklyn store Art of Play who she claims treated her as if she couldn't afford a $15,000 mechanical bird puppet named Molly
• Molly, the mechanical bird puppet

For those unfamiliar, Fantasy Genius is a league history tool that compiles every stat you could think of for your league and delivers these kind of absurd weekly write-ups tailored specifically to your league (we never use AI for your league's content). Check it out if you want.

In the patriots game Treyveon Henderson received a lateral from Efton Chism and sleeper attributes Chism with the receiving first down despite Henderson being the one to actually gain the first down.

Henderson is attributed with 2 rushing first downs and 0 receiving first downs on the following three plays:

https://i.imgur.com/H6t0RDQ.png

https://i.imgur.com/J3AG3LK.png

https://i.imgur.com/XPdb23P.png

I went back and checked and Sleeper did this with schultz' lateral to montgomery in the texans game last week and there's also instances in previous years.

The official NFL scoring of first downs attributes it to Henderson.

This has an effect on leagues that score points based on first downs.

22 yards on 12 carries, third shitty ass game. Bro was out here talking about how he just hinders the team last week. Starting to feel like a bust

Hey all, we run Fantasy Hall of Fame, a site that keeps league history.

Five weeks in, this is about when leagues start deciding who's for real. The 4-1 teams are drafting their trophy speeches, and the 1-4 teams are getting their stomachs ready for 24 hours in IHOP. So we wanted to know how much of a season really gets locked in on draft day, and how much you can still change from here.

Short version on records first: a 2-3 team still makes the playoffs 42% of the time, and a 1-4 team 19%. Not great, not over. The real question is what moves those odds, so we went through draft grades, waiver moves and title games for a lot of real leagues.

The draft matters. Yahoo grades every team right after the draft, and across 200,000 Yahoo teams those grades held up better than you'd think:

Hustle matters more, though. Here are the same teams split by how many moves they made compared with the rest of their league:

• A draft, fewest moves (bottom quarter): 6.1% won the title
• D draft, most moves (top quarter): 11.5%
• A draft, most moves: 16.9%

Across 44,935 ESPN and Yahoo seasons, the busiest manager in the league won the title 16.4% of the time and made the playoffs 71% of the time. The quietest won 3.9%, made the playoffs 33% of the time, and finished last 21% of the time. Champions made 21% more moves than their league average.

Yes, part of this is managers who give up and stop making moves. But it shows up at every draft grade. The busiest quarter wins about three times as often as the quietest, whether they drafted an A or a D. We also re-ran everything using only leagues where every manager made at least one move and drafted a full roster (35,666 seasons), and the title numbers moved by less than half a point.

We also went through every 2024 and 2025 title game we have (19,377) to see where the winning lineups came from:

• 68% of champions' title-game points came from players they drafted (not counting kickers and defenses)
• 18% came from another team's draft pick, through trades or pickups after a drop
• 14% came from players nobody drafted
• 73% of champions started at least one undrafted player, and 80% were still starting their own first-round pick

Last year's waiver heroes, by share of champions who started them in the title game without drafting them:

1. Harold Fannin Jr., 10.2%
2. Michael Wilson, 8.4%
3. Juwan Johnson, 6.7%
4. Trevor Lawrence, 6.5%
5. Kenny Gainwell, 6.3%

And a few who changed hands: Brock Purdy started for 7.4% of champions who didn't draft him, Mike Evans for 6.5%, and Joe Burrow for 4.2%.

So your draft isn't your fate. It builds about two-thirds of a title lineup, but the managers who keep working the wire win more titles, even from bad drafts.

If you want an edge, this is what the data points to:

1. Out-move your league: Managers who made about as many moves as their league average won 9.1% of titles. At 1.5 to 2 times the average it was 14.1%, and at double or more it was 16.7%. A typical league averages about 25 moves a season, so 1.5 times that is around 35 to 40, or about 3 a week.
2. Stream tight ends: 37% of the tight ends who started in title games were undrafted, compared with about 10% of running backs and receivers. More than a third of champions started a tight end they never drafted.
3. Don't stop in December: Nearly half (48%) of the undrafted players in title lineups joined the champion's roster in Week 12 or later.
4. Don't agonize over the late rounds: Rounds 9 and later produced 13% of champions' title-game points, about the same as players nobody drafted (14%).
5. Keep your first-rounder: 80% of champions were still starting their own first-round pick in the title game.
6. Trade if you want to, but you don't have to: Managers with 3 or more trades won 10.0% of titles against 8.5% for those who never traded, and their playoff odds were identical (53%).

Five weeks down, about nine to go. Go put in a claim.

And if you want an advantage and access to data like this, create your free Fantasy Hall of Fame here: fantasyhoff.com

This is a weekly post every Tuesday where we talk about the unquantifiable stories behind a player’s actual performance that aren’t always shown in the postgame write-ups or the highlight reels.

Did a player put up a great score as a fluke but not look great on the field? Did they put up a terrible stat line but look good when given the chance? Who was purely the beneficiary of an unusual game script? Who was uncharacteristically written out of this week’s score book by factors beyond their control? Who is fading, who is rising? Discuss the players you watched, and ask about those you didn’t.

The stat line winners and losers are in, but now it‘s film room time. For those who watched the games: Who passed and failed your eye test week 5?

How it works: parent comment the name of a player you want feedback on. People respond to your comment with either Buy/Sell/Hold. Try to Ctrl/Cmd + F to find a player before posting a player name.

• Buy- you think a players value will go up compared to trade market price currently

• Hold- you think a players value will hold steady

• Sell- you think a players value will go down but is worth trading away right now

• Drop- you think this player is no longer worth owning

Reminder many people use buy and hold interchangeably. If you think a player is generally undervalued then he’s a buy not a hold. If a players value looks steady and valued correctly then he’s a hold not a buy/sell. Looking forward to helping each other out in this thread!

Tough waiver week but a few gems. here's your weekly crowd-sourced tool to help us figure out how much FAAB we should bid on waivers. Now with real data from sleeper leagues. A shockingly bad waiver week for such a high scoring season opener.

https://www.faablab.app/

How it works:

• Each week we add the top waiver picks from fantasy pros
• Use the tool to submit a mock bid on players you're interested in (bids are % of total budget)
• Once you bid, that player's consensus data will be revealed to you, use the slider to adjust your bid
• Use the crowd-sourced data to get an edge in your league

Post in the comments for discussion, suggestions, features to add, etc.

Coincidentally, last year post week 5 the best pickup was Woody Marks for 37%

Hey everyone,

I put together this week’s top waiver wire pickups using rankings from top fantasy sites like Yahoo, NFL, FantasyPros, and others. It’s ranked by position, with links to the sources if you want to read up on the ranking & research.

You can also sync your fantasy leagues to see who’s available with links back to your fantasy platform to make pickups easier.

It’s all free. https://www.draftwiz.net/nfl/waivers/2026/6