Fantasy Football Week 5 winners and losers: Kyle Pitts arrives, Adam Thielen, Justin Fields struggle

Clive Rose/Getty Images

One week can't dramatically change a player's Fantasy outlook most of the time. Though we have a tendency to put additional weight on early-season results especially, the truth is, the results of one game can be influenced by a lot of things that just don't have very much to do with a player's Fantasy value going forward.

Look at Miami's Myles Gaskin, who had just five carries for 25 yards but nonetheless put together a very good Fantasy game Sunday, finishing with 31.9 PPR points thanks to a huge role in the receiving game. You should feel better about Gaskin's Fantasy value today than you did a week ago, but I'm not sure a 10-target game against the Buccaneers really tells us very much about how he is likely to play against the Jaguars, especially if the Dolphins have a healthy Tua Tagovailoa available.

Still, there is always plenty we can learn from one week, and that's what this column is all about: Finding players whose value may have changed for the better or the worse in Week 5. Here are my biggest winners and losers coming out of Sunday's action:

Winners

These 10 players come out of Week 5 looking better than they did coming in.

Kyle Pitts -- It took Calvin Ridley being away from the team dealing with a personal matter, a matchup against one of the worst defenses in the league, and a trip across the Atlantic ocean, but Pitts finally had the breakout game we've been waiting for Sunday. He was the team's obvious No. 1 target, with Matt Ryan looking his way 10 times, and Pitts hauled in nine of those passes for 119 yards and a touchdown. Sure, Pitts benefitted from Ridley's absence, it goes without saying. However, there's no reason the Falcons shouldn't be able to feature Pitts like this pretty much every game. It would make their offense more dynamic and would make it even harder for opposing defenses to focus on slowing Ridley down. Pitts has elite upside and you can't even consider benching him and passing up days like this.
Cordarrelle Patterson -- The idea behind calling Patterson a sell-high candidate last week was that he couldn't keep putting up elite Fantasy numbers while playing just 30% of the team's snaps. Well, Sunday, he plays closer to 60% of the snaps and actually led the team in rush attempts with 14, totaling 54 yards, while ranking second with nine targets, which he turned into seven for 60. Whether Patterson can sustain that kind of role when Ridley is active remains to be seen, but he also got twice as many carries as his previous season high. The Falcons would do well to continue getting him the ball, because it sure seems like this offense needs to revolve around Pitts, Ridley, and Patterson.
James Robinson -- If you were worried about whether Robinson's dominance in Week 4 came about because Carlos Hyde wasn't active, Sunday's game gave you a lot of reasons to be optimistic. While Robinson's snap share did fall from north of 90% last week to 67% Sunday, that was more than enough for him to rush for 149 yards on 18 carries, with Hyde getting just five carries. Robinson was only targeted once in the game -- and Hyde did get a key 4th and goal carry from the 1-yard line, which was infuriating, frankly -- but it's hard to come away from this game anything but pleased with Robinson's role. He's clearly not just the best back in this offense but one of the two or three best players, and he has to be viewed as a must-start RB at this point.
Chase Claypool -- While we don't yet know the extent of JuJu Smith-Schuster's shoulder injury, any amount of missed time would obviously be good news for Claypool. At this point, I'm not sure Ben Roethlisberger can support two starting caliber Fantasy options in the passing game alongside an elite running back, but I'm pretty certain he can't support three. Claypool was actually Roethlisberger's top target Sunday, with six passes going his way compared to just two for Diontae Johnson. Johnson should be the better player in any case, but if Smith Schuster is out, Claypool figures to play more two-WR sets and should see an uptick in target volume as well. That would put him in the WR3 discussion most weeks.
Leonard Fournette -- Even with Giovani Bernard back from his knee injury, Fournette was still the lead RB and a good Fantasy starter in Week 5. Does that mean he will continue to be every week? Given Bruce Arians' track record with running backs, probably not. However, Fournette played 63% of the snaps Sunday and had more snaps and carries than Bernard or Ronald Jones combined. I'm going to bet on Fournette remaining the lead back at least through Week 6 against the Eagles on Thursday night.
Myles Gaskin -- Just when I had given up on Gaskin, he goes and has a 10-catch, two-touchdown game against the Buccaneers. You can't rely on that kind of production routinely, and he still had just five carries, however after Malcolm Brown led the team in RB snaps in Week 4, he played just five Sunday -- compared to 34 for Gaskin. Gaskin is the most dynamic of Miami's running backs, and while I'm not close to being able to trust him after this game -- five carries and 10 targets isn't exactly a predictable workload -- but hopefully this is the start of him getting back there.
Alvin Kamara -- I have my complaints about how the Saints have run their offense, but they addressed some of the biggest ones Sunday, as they threw a season-high 30 passes and made a point of featuring Alvin Kamara in both facets on offense. Kamara is on pace for by far the most carries and yards of his career, but he somehow didn't have a rushing touchdown entering Week 5 and was coming off his first career game without a target. Sunday, he earned eight targets and got his first rushing touchdown, in addition to a short receiving touchdown. The Saints simply don't have enough playmakers in the passing game not to feature him like this, and while things could look different in Week 7 when they return from the bye -- potentially with a healthy Michael Thomas -- hopefully Week 6 was the low point of Kamara's season.
Josh Jacobs -- "We won a game yesterday. If we win one today, that's two in a row. If we win one tomorrow, it's called a 'winning streak'. It has happened before." In this case, I'm referring to Josh Jacobs having two games in a row with five targets, something that has never *extremely Lou Brown voice* happened before. That doesn't mean we can count on him to be that involved in the passing game every week, but it's a good sign for his value moving forward. Jacobs hasn't really run the ball all that well this season, but if he can get going -- I wonder if the toe and ankle issues from earlier are still slowing him down -- and has a larger role in the passing game, he could be much better than expected.
Kadarius Toney -- While it would have been nice to see Toney not throw a punch and get himself ejected from his breakout game, what a game it was. 10 catches for 189 yards on 13 targets while facing the full focus of an improved Cowboys defense -- Kenny Golladay left with knee injury while the Giants were already missing Sterling Shepard and Darius Slayton. Oh, and he was catching passes from Mike Glennon for much of the game. It was an impressive showing as the No. 1 WR from a player most wrote off as a gimmick or role player out of the draft. Toney is going to be one of the top waiver-wire targets for Week 6, and it's hard to make an argument for why he shouldn't be.
Dalton Schultz -- The Cowboys didn't throw the ball a ton, but their pass volume was up to 33 attempts Sunday, and Schultz remained a focal point. As in, he had more targets than Amari Cooper and CeeDee Lamb -- for the third straight game. I don't think Schultz is the No. 1 target for the Cowboys moving forward, but he has at least six targets in all but one game so far and has to be included among the ranks of the handful of few reliable tight ends these days.

Losers

It's hard to feel better about these players coming out of Week 5 than you did coming in.

Adam Thielen -- Two games in a row without a touchdown for Thielen, and now we're starting to see the limitations of his current skill set. When he's finding the end zone regularly, Thielen is a must-start Fantasy option, but the problem with that is, you can't count on someone who isn't putting up big yardage to get into the end zone regularly unless they are in an elite offense. Now, the Vikings have had a very efficient passing game the past few seasons, but Kirk Cousins isn't Tom Brady, so you can't necessarily count on that, too. He hasn't topped 50 yards in a game since Week 1 and is now averaging just 53.4 yards per game on 7.2 yards per target. Even if you think Thielen is more likely than nearly every other wide receiver to score on a per-target basis, this kind of production just leaves far too narrow a margin for error. I'm not saying you should cut him, but he's probably not going to be in my top-30 until we see something change.
Justin Fields -- I was cautiously optimistic that the Bears would start to use Justin Fields more like he should be once they named him the starter, and maybe that was the plan before he dealt with back and knee injuries throughout this game. However, Fields ran the ball just four times in this one for 3 yards, and now has just 24 rushing yards in three games as the starter. I just don't know when we're going to be able to trust Fields in Matt Nagy's offense, but I'm just not optimistic about it at all now.
Tyler Boyd -- The Bengals have played three games with all of Boyd, Tee Higgins, and Ja'Marr Chase active, and Boyd has five or fewer targets in two of them; across the three games, Boyd has 18 targets, while Higgins has 22 and Chase has 21. Even as the No. 3 option, Boyd still has some value, but given that he's probably the least likely of the three to score a touchdown or hit a big play, he's probably also the clear third-most valuable Fantasy option of the bunch, and probably not a top-30 option at WR, even in PPR.
Trey Sermon -- So, it turns out, maybe the fact that Sermon didn't touch the ball until every other running back on the roster got hurt might have told us something about how this coaching staff feels about him. Revealed preferences, and all that. With Elijah Mitchell healthy, Sermon played just two snaps in Week 5, carrying the ball once for 7 yards. Obviously, Sermon still has a chance to carve out a role for himself, especially if Mitchell suffers another injury, but there's no way you can view him as a starter. And, if we start to get word that JaMycal Hasty (IR) or Jeff Wilson (PUP) are close to returning after the team's Week 6 bye, Sermon may be droppable.
Odell Beckham -- I was so encouraged by Beckham's usage in Week 3, and I was willing to forgive his limited production in Week 4 as a result of Baker Mayfield's shoulder issue. However, Mayfield looked fine Sunday, throwing for 305 yards on 32 attempts and only three of those passes went to Beckham. Beckham did have a crucial drop on a fourth down in the second quarter, but that shouldn't be enough to lose his QB's trust. For some reason, Beckham and Mayfield just haven't been able to get on the same page over the three seasons they've played together, which makes it awfully tough to trust Beckham for Fantasy.
Jakobi Meyers -- As a double-digit round pick in most drafts, Meyers still looks like a pretty good value five weeks into the season, with 302 yards and 31 catches. However, he also kind of highlights the distinction between being a good value and a good Fantasy option, because there just hasn't been much upside in his profile so far. Meyer has at least 9.6 PPR points in four of five games, but has just one with more than 15. Part of that is that he has 46 targets without a touchdown, but because of the offense he plays in and his low-ADoT role, he's probably going to struggle to find the end zone more than most receivers. Meyers isn't a bad player to have around, but if you're relying on him as a weekly starter, you just aren't going to get many weeks from him where he really makes a big difference.
Laviska Shenault/Marvin Jones -- Expectations were high with D.J. Chark leaving last week's game with a season-ending fractured ankle, and it's fair to say they did not live up to those expectations. They combined for just two catches for 82 yards, but perhaps even more concerningly, they combined for just 24% of the team's targets between them against what should have been one of their easier matchups. I'm not sure how you could trust either of these guys in this offense.
Jaylen Waddle -- I want to hang on to Waddle to see what he looks like if and when Tua Tagovailoa is able to return, but I'm finding it hard to be optimistic about him at this point. That's true of the Dolphins offense as a whole in both regards, too, so I'm not saying you should drop Waddle. However, he's down to fewer than 50 yards per game, with just one game of more than 60 yards. Waddle has a locked-in role, and often, that's half the battle for a rookie wide receiver, so don't be surprised if Tagovailoa comes back and Waddle breaks out. But you can't trust him as a starter right now.
Sam Darnold -- Now that looked like the Darnold we saw for three years in New York. He turned the ball over three times and averaged just 4.8 yards per attempt, and had real struggles delivering the ball accurately -- including on an interception targeted to D.J. Moore in the end zone. That gives Darnold five interceptions in his last two games after just one in his first three, so we could be seeing the regression starting to take hold. I still have in him playing better in this offense, but it's harder to buy the idea that there was a significant leap than it was a few weeks ago.
Melvin Gordon/Javonte Williams -- This is a true split backfield, and in games like Sunday's where the Broncos are trailing, that means there aren't a ton of opportunities for either -- especially since the two combine for less than 15% of the team's targets. There is no real differentiation between how they are used, which makes the difference between them in any given week which one breaks a long run or finds the end zone. I still love Williams as a stash for the second half, because I'm betting on his role growing, but it hasn't happened yet. If you're starting either of these players at this point, you're not in a great spot, and that won't change unless and until someone takes on a larger role for good.