NFL Week 5 Waiver Wire: Top Pickups & Must Adds

Welcome to our weekly waiver wire blog where we break down the most important fantasy football pickups heading into Week 5!

 

Rachaad White 

We were ahead of the curve on Woody Marks last week, so I’m not going to include him here even though he’s still owned in under 50% of leagues. This one came onto my radar late, after news broke that Bucky Irving was headed for an MRI. We don’t have any concrete news on the severity yet, but White would undoubtedly lead this backfield should Irving miss a game or two and would be a top fantasy option in that scenario. He’s worth at least a speculative pickup while we wait and see. 

Darius Slayton 

Unfortunately, Malik Nabers suffered a season ending torn ACL on Sunday against the Chargers, making Slayton arguably the top add option of the week. We saw Nabers miss two games during his rookie campaign, resulting in a monster workload for Slayton. He saw over 28% of the teams total targets last week with Nabers off the field and will likely be the biggest beneficiary of his absence on this offense. It’s a new QB, but I still think Slayton is a good player and the opportunity share is all that matters to me. 

Isaiah Bond

This is a deeper league pickup, but I think we could really see Bond arrive with Ced Tillman now out for the Browns. Bond was great at Texas, and would have been selected pretty high in the NFL draft if not for off the field issues. With that seemingly behind him, we’ve seen his target% jump each week of the season and the Browns offense is getting a nice boost switching from the statue that is Joe Flacco to Rookie Dillon Gabriel. Overall, there’s an outside chance Bond is the best WR on this team and I don’t hate trying to get ahead of the field on a potential WR1 down the stretch of the season.