Welcome back to Lucid Streams. Our goal here is to help you find emergency help that’s potentially available on the waiver wire or on the back of your bench when you’re scrambling for options due to injuries or plain old poor drafting at wide receiver and tight end. We also want to equip you with the tools to go out on your own and find the best fantasy football sleepers yourself in case the options listed here each week aren’t available to you. Our goal is to find WRs who have at least a reasonable chance to contribute 10+ PPR points to your lineup this week and TEs who can chip in at least seven points in PPR.
Last week, we were three for four on our main WR recommendations; we also nailed both of the Honorable Mention candidates, giving us hits on five of six touted players. At TE, we hit a perfect four for four in our main recommendations, though our Honorable Mention section left something to be desired at zero for two. Still, TE is tough, and we’re committed to continuing to dig deep rather than take the easy way out with midrange options.
The Process
What we are looking for each week is to find the players most likely to pop for one of several reasons. They may have an increased role in their offense due to the misfortune of a player ahead of them on the depth chart, or they may be facing a defense that will have trouble defending them due to a positional mismatch. Maybe that’s a chronic problem of the defense, or maybe it’s due to injuries in the coverage units, which will allow a unique opportunity for success by our streamer. At the intersection of high opportunity and low ownership is where we want to pan for gold in the stream. Remember, these are recommendations for those who are really in a bind for a starter and should not be played over anyone you’d normally start.
We’ll use a variety of tools to help us, including schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to the WR and TE positions. If you’re not familiar with this metric, it removes the variance that can skew fantasy points allowed by a defense due to the quality of the passing attacks they’ve faced. For example, if Defense A has faced four top-tier passing offenses in the first four weeks while Defense B has faced only weak passing offenses over that same period, it could appear that Defense B is better at defending WRs than Defense A, when in reality, Defense A might be the tougher matchup.
The further we get into the season, the more relevance this analysis will have. To start the season, we’ll be using data from 2023, which may or may not continue to be accurate for 2024, but it’s better to at least know where a defense left off at the end of last season than to know nothing at all.
Streaming Wide Receivers Week 6
Jalen Tolbert, Dallas Cowboys
Tolbert appeared in last week’s article and treated us to a WR12 finish. As such, he’s going to be a hot item on the waiver wire this week, so hopefully you’re holding tight if you picked him up last week or grabbed him already for this week. This will likely be the last time we see him in this column, but I think he’ll go out with a bang against Detroit. This game is likely to be a fantasy carnival of points, and Detroit is the schedule-adjusted third-easiest defense for WRs to exploit. Stick him in your lineup again with confidence and enjoy.
Ray-Ray McCloud, Atlanta Falcons
McCloud is a fringy, back-of-the-roster player who may or may not be on waivers. If he is, and if you have a need, go ahead and pick him up because he can go right in your lineup against the Carolina Panthers, who are giving it up to opposing WRs with regularity. The ceiling isn’t super high here, but the floor looks safe.
Michael Wilson, Arizona Cardinals
Wilson is another fringy-type WR who is probably still on waiver wires in shallower formats. Arizona draws the Green Bay Packers this week, a schedule-adjusted seventh-worst defense at holding opposing wideouts in check. Kyler Murray has also shown a willingness to look Wilson’s way, targeting him nine, seven, and six times over the past three weeks.
Rashod Bateman, Baltimore Ravens
Don’t look now, but I’m recommending a Ravens pass-catcher. The Washington Commanders are good enough on offense to make this a festival of fantasy points, and the Ravens are likely to have to air it out to keep up. Throwing out Week 4, when the Ravens’ passing game was almost completely game-scripted out of their matchup with Buffalo due to their ground game being so potent, Bateman has gotten between four and eight targets every game. He has also beaten our 10-point threshold in two of his last three games.
Honorable Mentions
- Demario Douglas: With Drake Maye under center, things might be looking up for Patriots WRs, and Douglas makes a nice safety blanket
- Ja’Lynn Polk: Yes, another Patriot. Polk is the Patriots’ most talented WR and has shown a nose for the end zone.
Streaming Tight Ends Week 6
Noah Fant, Seattle Seahawks
There’s no real upside here, but there is a solid floor, which is sometimes what we settle for in fantasy football sleepers. Fant draws the 49ers’ defense on Thursday night. The team from San Francisco just lost safety Talanoa Hufanga, which should theoretically make life at least somewhat easier for Fant.
Juwan Johnson, New Orleans Saints
Yes, Derek Carr is going to be out for a few weeks, but we often see inexperienced quarterbacks rely on safe, easy throws to their TEs. Johnson just finished playing the Chiefs, and while he didn’t score, he did manage to find a few holes to penetrate, which means he’s getting hard to stop after a few flaccid weeks. In the world of tight-end one-night stands, you could find a happy ending here.
Jordan Akins, Cleveland Browns
David Njoku made it through about two quarters of football before re-injuring himself, putting Akins back on the streaming radar. The Eagles aren’t the easiest defense for TEs to accumulate stats against (they’re the second-toughest in our schedule-adjusted world), but Akins has been a steady producer in the absence of Njoku. In a passing game woefully short of good answers, Akins is one of the best guesses you can make.
Ja’Tavion Sanders, Carolina Panthers
Tommy Tremble had been the starting TE for the Panthers, but he’s almost certainly going to be out with a concussion, so in steps Sanders, for this week, at least. With Xavier Legette also likely out, Sanders should be in the mix for a decent number of targets. Give him a chance to be your unlikely hero at TE for Week 6.
Honorable Mentions
- Theo Johnson: He got some extra looks with Malik Nabers out, and now gets a schedule-adjusted seventh-worst Bengals defense against the TE position.
- Chigoziem Okonkwo: The TE work is pretty widely spread in the Titans’ offense, but it’s at least worth noting he gets the Colts’ third-worst defense vs. TEs.
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