Fantasy Football: A.J. Brown, Jordan Mason and 4 more players you should consider fading in Week 5

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Welcome to Week 5 of the fantasy football fades and busts of the week! I am your host, Matt Okada, and will be bringing you half a dozen players to avoid each and every Thursday throughout the fantasy season. Last week’s fade of David Montgomery turned out to be spot on — and we’re returning to the well (sort of) this week. Still seeking the perfect 6-for-6 — let’s make it happen.

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As a note, just because a player earns a “fade” or “bust” designation doesn’t automatically mean they should be benched — it depends on the rest of your roster or the options on your waiver wire. But you can expect them to fall short of expectations (when I get them right).

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Without further ado, here is my list for Week 5 of the 2025 season.

Baker Mayfield, QB, Buccaneers

Chances are, with a few “streamer-tier” QBs on bye and a number of injuries at the position, Baker Mayfield is going to end up starting in most leagues. And that’s not the end of the world. But if you have a breakout option in a better matchup — someone like Drake Maye, Daniel Jones or maybe even Jaxson Dart — consider pivoting this week.

Mayfield hasn’t topped 20 fantasy points since Week 1, and he would have been below 17 in two of the last three weeks if not for sporadically inflated rushing numbers. In Week 5, he draws a tough matchup with a Seahawks defense allowing the fourth-lowest passer rating in the league. Seattle has yet to allow 17+ fantasy points to an opposing quarterback. The Seahawks have posted a 38.7% pressure rate (top 10) while blitzing on just 16.8% of dropbacks, second-least in the NFL, which makes jobs much harder on opposing passers. With Mike Evans out, Chris Godwin Jr. still less than 100% and now Bucky Irving banged up, Mayfield is going to have to rely heavily on Emeka Egbuka to have a shot this Sunday. That’s quite the litany of red flags, making Mayfield more of a borderline play than a sure-start.

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What to do ❓ If Mayfield is your only decent quarterback, he should be OK in Week 5, and there’s no need to drop him for a deep streamer. But if you have an alternative option, you should likely lean that way. Mayfield hasn’t shown the highest of ceilings in recent weeks and Seattle’s defense lowers his floor.

Jordan Mason, RB, Vikings

This is the “well” I mentioned returning to in Week 5 — the Cleveland Browns matchup. We faded Montgomery last week against this stifling defense and he ended up totaling 12 rushing yards on nine carries and scoring just 1.2 fantasy points. While I believe Jordan Mason will be better than that in London on Sunday morning, it’s worth remembering that Derrick Henry totaled just 23 yards on 11 carries (2.3 fantasy points) in this same matchup. The Browns are allowing a truly terrifying -0.1 yards before contact per carry on average, lowest in the league. On average, rushers are getting hit behind the line of scrimmage against this front. They’ve allowed just four explosive runs all year (3.8% explosive run rate), also the lowest in the league.

Outside of Jahmyr Gibbs, who compiled 91 rushing yards against Cleveland, no other running back has topped 50, and Henry, Montgomery, Josh Jacobs and Chase Brown averaged just 27 yards per game between them. To put it bluntly: if Mason doesn’t score a touchdown, or randomly catch a handful of passes, he is likely to finish with low-single-digit fantasy points and be a disappointing RB3 or worse.

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What to do ❓ If you can bench Mason for any reasonable starting running back this week, do it. His floor is literally four or five fantasy points, and his ceiling even with a touchdown will not exceed that of mid-range RB2s like Kenneth Walker III or Travis Etienne Jr. My hottest take of the week: I’d start Woody Marks off the waiver wire against the Ravens over Mason in this matchup.

Isiah Pacheco, RB, Chiefs

Coming off a week with 11.8 fantasy points — double digits finally! — you might be tempted to start Isiah Pacheco in Week 5. Don’t. Pacheco still only managed 35 rushing yards on seven carries, marking his fourth straight game with 10 or fewer carries and fewer than 50 rushing yards. Pacheco lucked into a receiving touchdown last week, hence the double-digit scoreline, but outside of that single catch, he scored just 4.5 fantasy points. And whatever hope there may have been for Pacheco’s receiving usage was quickly squashed by comments from HC Andy Reid and OC Matt Nagy about getting rookie pass-catching RB Brashard Smith more involved.

Pacheco has not cracked 60% of the offensive snaps in a game this season, and he dropped all the way down to 37.1% against the Ravens last week (with Kareem Hunt taking 44.3%). He’s unfortunately encroaching on droppable territory, though if you have him and can trade him for a bag of chips off of his Week 4 touchdown, I’d take that route now. Either way, he’s completely unstartable, even in a decent matchup with Jacksonville, barring a complete shift in the offensive approach for Kansas City.

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What to do ❓ Bench Pacheco, or better yet, try to trade him for Woody Marks or RJ Harvey. If you’re desperate, it might be better to pick up and “stream” someone like Emari Demercado or Chris Rodriguez Jr. than to trust the Chiefs back in your lineup.

A.J. Brown, WR, Eagles

This is a major risk, as A.J. Brown has become a very publicly squeaky wheel this past week and might get the grease on Sunday. But I put my trust in Patrick Surtain II over cryptic Instagram posts and disgruntled wideout narratives. Pro Football Focus projects that Brown will see roughly half of his snaps against Surtain, and the reigning Defensive Player of the Year has been an absolute disaster for opposing wideouts (again) this year. Surtain has only been targeted 17 times this season and has allowed just 11 catches for 122 yards across four games.

Also, while his displeasure might indicate Brown isn’t being targeted, he has seen eight or more targets in three straight games after the one-target opener. It’s just that in two of those three games, he’s totaled fewer than 30 receiving yards. He’s averaging just 1.4 yards per route run on the season and an even more concerning 5.4 yards per target (in the range of receivers like Olamide Zaccheaus and Cedric Tillman). Brown obviously has the talent to drop a massive game almost any given week — like he did against the Rams — but I’m not betting on it against Surtain and Co. this Sunday.

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What to do ❓ You’ll be hard-pressed to bench Brown in typical fantasy leagues — he’s still a WR2 in most rankings even with the struggles and the matchup. But intriguing up-from-the-bench risers like Jaylen Waddle, Xavier Worthy and Jordan Addison all have a good shot at outperforming him this weekend. If you can get away with strong WR2 alternates, avoiding the Brown bust entirely isn’t a crazy call.

Chris Godwin Jr., WR, Buccaneers

In another patented “unstack” — it’s not really patented, that’s just a turn of phrase — I’m quite concerned about Chris Godwin Jr. going up against Seattle with the aforementioned Mayfield. Godwin saw an impressive 10 targets with Evans absent in his season debut last week … but caught just three of them for 26 yards. Given the nature of Godwin’s injury and surgeries this offseason, it was always going to be the case that the Pro Bowl receiver took some time to ramp up to 100% in 2025. And while the Bucs were rushed into featuring him once again with Evans sidelined, it did not go well and I don’t see them forcing the issue again this week. Either way, a less-than-fully-healthy Godwin is not a great bet against the Seahawks secondary, which has allowed the second-fewest fantasy points to wide receivers this year, behind only the Vikings. Just three wideouts have hit double-digit fantasy points against this defense and two of them — Marvin Harrison Jr. and Chris Olave — needed double-digit targets to do so. Godwin is a major risk for a sub-10-point performance this weekend.

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What to do ❓ Unlike Brown, you can absolutely bench Godwin this week — heck, you were doing it for the first three weeks of the year. He’s somewhere on the back-end of WR3 range, and that might be a bit optimistic off his 10-target Week 4. If he doesn’t see that kind of volume again (and he shouldn’t), Godwin’s a major bust risk against Seattle.

T.J. Hockenson, TE, Vikings

After scoring fewer than six fantasy points in three of four weeks this season, T.J. Hockenson is already a borderline starter at best. He’s seen 3-6 targets in every game, but has yet to top 50 yards receiving and his only decent day was the result of his single touchdown on the year (against the Bengals in Week 3).

Now, he’s taking on a Browns defense that hasn’t allowed five catches or 40 yards to a single tight end all year. The only tight end to hit double-digit fantasy points against Cleveland was Noah Fant (thanks entirely to a one-yard touchdown), and the “busts” include Sam LaPorta (5.4 points), Tucker Kraft (4.4) and Mark Andrews (0.9). There’s little evidence to suggest Hockenson will fare any better than that trio, and he’s never been much of a touchdown maven, so the odds he scores somewhere in the mid-single-digits are extremely high. There are probably several streamers worth considering over the Vikings tight end playing across the pond this week.

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What to do ❓ Ultimately, Hockenson falls into the massive tier of tight ends outside the top five or six that project for roughly four catches and 40 yards. Given the tough matchup and the rarity of a Hockenson touchdown, I’d prefer several other names in that tier this week.

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