Fantasy Football Week 5 Quarterback Rankings: Don't trust Joe Burrow this week

Chris Towers walks you through his Week 5 QB rankings

By Chris Towers

Oct 8, 2023 at 8:51 am ET • 2 min read

Fantasy Football players, lend me your ears: I come to bury Joe Burrow, not to praise him. Burrow enters Week 5 as the No. 31 QB in six-point-per-pass-TD leagues, with just 35.4 points total through four games; to put that into context, Burrow had more points in two separate games last season. Burrow has been terrible, and with just 4.7 points last week, things aren't getting better.

And yet, when I actually went through the process of ranking the quarterbacks for Week 5, I couldn't really bring myself to bury him as far as he probably deserves to be. Sure, I've got Burrow much lower than his preseason rankings. But do I really feel that much better about Dak Prescott against the 49ers, given how mediocre he's been and how passive that offense has been, over Burrow against the Cardinals? Do I really want to start Russell Wilson against the Jets or Brock Purdy against the Cowboys, either?

If you can get C.J. Stroud, you should definitely start him ahead of Burrow. And I would have done the same with Sam Howell against the Bears and Matthew Stafford against the Eagles, too, though I obviously don't love the matchup. But the problem with trying to bury Burrow entirely in Week 4 is, that between Geno Smith and Justin Herbert being on byes and a bunch of the most interesting streamers facing touch matchups, I just can't bring myself to move Burrow too far down.

My preference, of course, would be to sit Burrow -- but not to drop him. I don't have any specific reasons to suggest Burrow is going to be significantly better moving forward than he has been. He's been terrible, especially on deep passes, where Burrow's 2.3 passer rating is by far the lowest in the league -- he's 2 for 22 with two interceptions on passes that traveled at least 15 yards past the line of scrimmage. He's clearly not healthy, and this offense hasn't looked right all season.

But we're also talking about a consensus top-five QB before the season, who still has plenty of weapons -- though Tee Higgins' rib injury is another reason to steer clear in Week 5. I do believe we'll see Burrow play at a high level at some point this season. But I'm not expecting it in Week 5, and I want to stay as far away as I can