Let’s Stream Defenses: Week 5 (2025 Fantasy Football)

It’s Week 5 and fantasy football is getting serious. Teams with less than 2 wins have an uphill battle to keep their playoff hopes alive, and now we have four teams on bye. We’ve seen multiple high-profile injuries to cornerstone fantasy players, like Joe Burrow, CeeDee Lamb, Malik Nabers and Tyreek Hill. Several more early picks have been heating up the panic meter, including Ja’Marr Chase, Ladd McConkey and Nico Collins. Bench spots are suddenly at a premium for most teams, which makes it hard to justify spending one on a defense. This early in the season, I advise against carrying an extra defense unless it’s a particularly deep league or particularly healthy team. Fortunately there are multiple teams you should be able to play for at least the next two weeks, including the Bills, Lions, Colts, Eagles and Seahawks.

The big news in quarterback land is the emergence of Jaxson Dart for the Giants. He looked very good in his first start, upsetting the Chargers while scoring touchdowns through the air and with his feet, and avoiding any turnovers. This is great news for Giants fans, but it wasn’t so strong as to scare me off of starting defenses against the Giants for now. They allowed a league-lead-tying 6 sacks last week: 5 against Dart, and 1 against Russell Wilson while Dart was being evaluated for a concussion. I expect the high sack numbers to continue, and it is still a rookie quarterback. He’s going to need to turn in a couple more no-turnover performances and clean up the sacks before I stop targeting the Giants with defenses. This will be a bigger challenge after the loss of Malik Nabers, who suffered a torn ACL without contact, simply trying to jump on MetLife’s infamous turf.

Streaming Defenses: Fantasy Football Waiver Wire & Start/Sit Advice (Week 5)

This is the first week of byes, with the Falcons, Panthers, Steelers and Packers all sitting this one out. It’s an excellent streaming week thanks to multiple good matchups for teams that are available in most leagues. Rostership numbers are from Yahoo. You can find me on Bluesky.

Matchups

1. ARI vs TEN: The Titans continued their run of being an amazing defense matchup last week. Thanks to a couple of missed field goals from Joey Slye, they were shut out completely by the Texans. To his credit, Cam Ward managed to take just 2 sacks, a notable improvement from 15 through the first 3 weeks. But that’s cold comfort if you can barely move the ball at all. The Cardinals might not be the best defense, but they’re certainly in the large category of teams I’m happy to start against the Titans.
2. DET @ CIN: The Jake Browning Bengals were unsurprisingly annihilated by the Broncos, failing to add anything after a field goal on the first drive. We now have two and a half games of Browning being consistently terrible. When Joe Burrow was injured there were some early trade rumors about some of the league’s better backups like Malik Willis, and I’m surprised that we haven’t continued to hear about that. It won’t get any easier in the short term, as this week the Bengals have to face another great defense, the Lions. Hopefully you picked up Detroit for last week’s Browns matchup and can let it ride this week.
3. MIN @ CLE: Joe Flacco and the Browns did not rise to the occasion against a good Lions’ defense last week. Flacco recorded his first 3-sack game of the season and recorded 3 turnovers: a pair of interceptions and a lost fumble. The Vikings might not be on the level of Lions defensively, but they’re certainly able to capitalize on turnover opportunities, as demonstrated by their huge game against the Bengals in Week 3.
4. CLE vs MIN: When Carson Wentz made his first start for the Vikings in Week 3, he played well in a blowout against the wet paper bag defense of the Bengals. It didn’t go nearly as well against a good Steelers defense, where Wentz threw 2 interceptions and tied Kyler Murray for the highest sack total of the week with 6. This week the Vikings face an even better defense. In this year’s draft the Browns traded down from No. 2 overall, allowing the Jaguars to take Travis Hunter, and instead took defensive tackle Mason Graham at No. 5 overall (in addition to Quinshon Judkins in the 2nd round and a 2026 1st). This has been a huge success so far. Graham has been a terror up the middle, and as a result has created a lot of space for Myles Garrett, who already has 4 sacks and a league-leading 8 tackles for loss. The Browns might be the best real-world defense in the league, and are widely available because they just concluded a stretch of 4 great offenses to start the season. Their schedule is much friendlier the rest of the way – go get them. I expect that 9% rostership to be closer to 99% after waivers clear in most leagues tomorrow.
5. BUF vs NE: The Patriots blew out the Panthers with 42 points last week, while Drake Maye had a near-perfect passer rating and took fewer than 3 sacks for the first time this season. It won’t be so easy against the Bills. There’s of course a great offense on that side, but the Bills’ defense has been good too. After a Week 1 shootout with the Ravens, they’ve held their last 3 opponents to 21 points or fewer. The Patriots are a bit stronger on offense than the Jets, Dolphins or Saints, but they’ve also had their fair share of turnover issues. There’s some risk, but the outlook is good for the Bills at home.
6. NO vs NYG: Jaxson Dart was awesome in his first NFL start, picking up a 21-18 win against a good Chargers defense, while avoiding any turnovers. Despite all that, the Chargers still turned in a decent fantasy day thanks to 5 sacks against Dart, and a 6th against Russell Wilson for good measure, while Dart was being evaluated for injury (he did return). The Saints have allowed some big scores from good offenses, but they’ve had a quietly solid pass rush at the same time – they have 3 or more sacks in 3/4 games. If Dart keeps playing well the Giants could become a team we don’t want to target. But for now I expect Dart to continue to take sacks at a high rate, and the offense took a big blow with Malik Nabers out for the season with a torn ACL.
7. IND vs LV: Geno Smith avoided taking any sacks against the Bears last week, after recording 12 through the first 3 weeks. Maybe he should have held onto the ball more, because he compensated for the lack of sacks with 3 interceptions. The Raiders’ run game finally looked pretty good last week, with Ashton Jeanty for once getting enough blocking to explode for 155 total yards and 3 touchdowns. Such a run-focused team would normally be a bad defense matchup because most defense scoring happens on dropbacks (all sacks and interceptions of course, but also more than half of fumbles). As it stands though, we’ve seen a lot more bad than good from the Raiders’ offensive line this season, and the passing game is a liability. The Colts may have picked up their first loss against the Rams last week, but they’re still clearly the better team in this game.
8. NYG @ NO: While the Saints may have turned in an uninspiring fantasy day for the opposing Bills due to a lack of turnovers, it was still a classic bad-offense game. They failed to reach 20 points for the third time this season, and Spencer Rattler turned in a healthy stat line of 3 sacks and an interception. Now they face a Giants defense that just held a much better Chargers offense to 18 points.
9. SEA vs TB: The Seahawks’ defense has been excellent this year, in real life and in fantasy. They’ve finished among the top 12 fantasy defenses every week, and are currently on a 3-game streak of finishing in the top 5. Baker Mayfield has operated an average offense for the Buccaneers, which would not normally lead to a top-10 rank from me for the opposing defense. But the Seahawks have been good enough that they’re a perfectly reasonable start against an offense on this level. It is a bit of a boom-bust play with a relatively low expectation for sacks, but upside with turnovers. The Seahawks have recorded 2 interceptions against each of the 49ers, Steelers and Cardinals, all 3 of whom are run by quarterbacks not known for frequent turnovers.
10. PHI vs DEN: One of the most interesting narratives this season is the increase in big plays on special teams, and the Eagles have been at the epicenter. The new kickoff has led to twice as many returns and good kickers being much more impactful, but we’ve also seen an increase in big plays in other special teams settings. The theory is that the need to focus on the new kickoff in practice has led to sloppy play elsewhere. The Eagles blocked a pair of field goals in Week 3, and followed that up with a blocked punt last week. The Bo Nix Broncos are not one of my usual defense targets, owing to Nix’s proficiency at avoiding sacks. Despite that, the overall quality of Philly’s defense, a low Vegas-implied point projection of 19.5, and the potential for more big special teams plays add up the the Eagles being a totally viable start this week.