Fantasy Football Stock Report: Quentin Johnston comes down to earth while David Njoku is back on the radar after Week 5

With all but one Week 5 game in the books (Monday Night Football), we’ve learned a little bit more than we knew last week. Or, in some cases, thought we knew. Players impressed, players disappointed and there is fantasy football fallout to unpack.

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Once again, I’ve compiled the full weekly fantasy stock report below. These are the most notable risers and fallers coming out of Week 5. Invest accordingly!

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📈 Stock Up at RB

Kyren Williams, Rams

To kick off Week 5, Kyren Williams dropped 27.1 fantasy points on the back of 65 yards rushing, 66 yards receiving and two receiving touchdowns. This came after he scored single-digit fantasy points in two of his previous three games and ceded somewhat significant volume to Blake Corum late in September. Well, Williams handled a whopping 90.6% of the snaps on TNF in Week 5 vs. the 49ers — despite losing a fumble — and Corum touched the ball just once. We’ll see if it holds, but confidence in Williams’ workload is riding high.

Jacory Croskey-Merritt, Commanders

Jacory-Croskey Merritt has been a bit of a roller coaster in this column to start the season. He had a strong Week 1, was supposed to take over for Austin Ekeler, did not (with any confidence), struggled for three weeks straight and, just when hope was fading, broke out for 111 yards and two touchdowns on 14 carries (plus two catches for 39 yards) on Sunday.

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While JCM still only played 49.1% of the offensive snaps in Week 5, he finally earned a “lead back” workload and looked impressive with it. It would be surprising if Washington didn’t continue to shift the backfield further into Croskey-Merritt’s hands.

Kendre Miller, Saints

Speaking of shifting workloads, the Saints played RB Kendre Miller on 41.9% of snaps in Week 5 and he out-carried and out-produced Alvin Kamara. This now marks two straight weeks that Miller has logged double-digit carries and 40+ rushing yards. It’s highly unlikely Kamara will disappear from the offense (barring injury), so Miller’s ceiling may be capped, but his trajectory could be headed somewhere towards flex-worthy RB3 territory if this spike in involvement continues.

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📈 Stock Up at WR

Stefon Diggs, Patriots

At the risk of sounding reactive and hyperbolic … Stefon Diggs might be back. The start of the season was relatively slow — not surprising considering the timeline of his ACL recovery — but Diggs has now posted 100+ receiving yards in consecutive games, with a monster 12-target, 10-catch, 146-yard outing on Sunday night against his former team. Diggs appears to have locked down the true WR1 role for Drake Maye, which, when combined with his talent, looks like a very lucrative situation for fantasy. He’s a must-roster and a probably-must-start for now, but Diggs could even climb into high-end WR2 territory at this rate.

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Courtland Sutton, Broncos

Not only did Courtland Sutton log his third straight game with 13+ fantasy points (and fourth in five weeks), he did it against a strong Eagles secondary on a season-high 10 targets. The Troy Franklin blip game from Week 2 seems like just that — a blip — as Sutton has caught at least five passes and hit at least 60 yards in every other contest. He is Bo Nix’s clear No. 1 option and is currently a borderline WR1 in fantasy as well. Plus, while he may draw Sauce Gardner next week, he has a very “green” schedule for the couple months after that.

Calvin Ridley, Titans

Last week, we wrote Calvin Ridley off for “mostly dead” in fantasy (shoutout The Princess Bride). Naturally, that’s when he and Cam Ward decided to wake up. In a wild, late-shenanigans, comeback win over the Cardinals — the first of Tennessee’s season — Ridley garnered 10 targets and caught five for 131 yards. He still hasn’t scored, the catch rate is still highly suspect and he had only totaled 141 yards through the first four games combined … but it was good to see Ridley post legitimate production when fed the ball. We’re not slotting Ridley right back into starting lineups, but this at least makes him rosterable again.

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📈 Stock Up Elsewhere

David Njoku, Browns

In Dillon Gabriel’s first start, David Njoku hit season highs in targets (9), receptions (6) and yards (67) and caught his first touchdown of the season. His 15.7 fantasy points on Sunday morning in London were more than he’d scored in the previous three games combined. His 27% target share was particularly encouraging, and no one else really stepped up to produce for Cleveland with Cedric Tillman out. Rookie Harold Fannin Jr. is still seeing legitimate usage, but Njoku may be more reliable with Gabriel than he had been with Joe Flacco.

Jaxson Dart, Giants

Jaxson Dart has now rushed for 109 yards through his first two starts, leading all quarterbacks in rushing yards per start and hitting 17+ fantasy points in both games as a result. He was also a bit more productive as a passer in Week 5 (though the two interceptions marred his statline), against a weak Saints defense. The passing should improve, at least marginally, but it might not matter either way if Dart is rushing like this all year. He’s a strong streaming candidate, especially when we get into the messier bye weeks.

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📉 Stock Down at RB

Derrick Henry, Ravens

Something’s wrong in Baltimore. And I don’t mean the litany of injuries at every conceivable position, though that’s probably part of the cause. I’m talking about the fact that Derrick Henry has had 50 or fewer rushing yards in four straight games. He hasn’t had more than 15 carries since Week 1, and while he scored a touchdown on Sunday, he posted single-digit fantasy points for the third time in four weeks. To be clear: we’re not panicking on Henry just yet. I trust John Harbaugh and this organization to figure things out to some degree soon — at least on the offensive side of the ball. But for right now, we cannot view Henry as a reliable RB1, and we might be waiting a little while for a correction to this troubling trend.

Chuba Hubbard, Panthers

This isn’t really about Chuba Hubbard’s injury, though his absence on Sunday did open the door for the real problem. Hubbard had already been ceding a bit of work to Rico Dowdle, but after the “backup” back hung 234 scrimmage yards on the Dolphins on Sunday (with a touchdown), it’s hard to imagine Carolina going back to a heavily Hubbard-favored split when he’s healthy. I’d still expect he leads the backfield on his return, but it’s not guaranteed and it might not be enough to keep Hubbard in the RB2 conversation in this typically lackluster offense.

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Chase Brown, Bengals

If you weren’t already in full panic mode on Chase Brown, sound the alarms. Outside of Week 1, when he had 23 touches, found the end zone and still only scored 12.1 fantasy points, Brown has logged single digits in every other week of the young season. Jake Browning’s version of the Bengals offense has been disastrous, and Brown’s fantasy value has arguably suffered the most. In a Week 5 game in which the Cincy back caught seven passes, he still finished with just 48 total scrimmage yards and 8.3 fantasy points. He simply cannot be started, and it might not be long before he can be dropped in shallow leagues.

📉 Stock Down at WR

Chris Godwin Jr., Bucs

In his first game back from injury (in Week 4), Chris Godwin Jr. was unproductive for fantasy, but saw 10 targets. There was some solid hope. In Week 5, Godwin saw just four targets, catching three for 26 yards, while Emeka Egbuka went off for 163 yards on seven catches. Cade Otton, Tez Johnson and Rachaad White also had better days than Godwin did. And it won’t be long (hopefully) before Mike Evans is back. If Godwin isn’t going to have volume or efficiency, he’s going to be mighty hard to trust for fantasy.

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Quentin Johnston, Chargers

I won’t say the “shoe finally dropped” with Quentin Johnston, because that would be an overreaction to one poor game. But after scorching the league through September, Johnston had just four targets in Sunday’s loss to the Commanders and posted just 4.9 fantasy points. Keenan Allen and Ladd McConkey both had better fantasy days on more targets, suggesting that, at best, Johnston is merely the 1A in a true three-way wide receiver committee. He’s still a huge value over his August draft price, but if you were starting to view Johnston as a borderline WR1 for fantasy, you probably need to readjust.

A.J. Brown, Eagles

The squeaky wheel did not get the grease in Week 5, at least not to the degree that it mattered for fantasy. For the third time in the last four weeks, A.J. Brown saw at least eight targets but posted fewer than seven fantasy points. In fact, out of 23 wide receivers with 35+ targets on the year, Brown is the only one with fewer than 40 fantasy points. There’s simply no denying that things are askew in Philly, and that Brown is going to be inconsistent at best until they’re fixed. He had the one 19.9-point fantasy day in Week 3 to remind us of his ceiling, but in the other four contests, AJB has averaged just 3.75 points per game. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s been awful. I would bench him until we see some inkling of consistency.

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📉 Stock Down Elsewhere

Juwan Johnson, Saints

After starting the year with 11, nine and eight targets in the first three games, and averaging 6.3 catches per game over that span, Juwan Johnson has totaled just seven targets and five catches over the past two weeks. And with Taysom Hill’s return in Week 5, Johnson had his worst game of the year, snagging just two passes for 17 yards. If you were excited about the Saints tight end saving your season off the waiver wire, temper that excitement. He’s out of must-start range unless we see a big bounce-back in usage.