Fantasy Football Week 5 Waiver Wire

A few days after the free world went crazy adding Ryan Torain to their roster, they now get to wait a week to find out exactly what kind of role he fits into with the Redskins. Aside from the Redskins potential running back by committee, this week features some tough breaks as Ray Rice, Steven Jackson and Felix Jones are all on byes. For Jones and Jackson it will hopefully help get them back to 100%. For Peyton Hillis, maybe he can get something figured out with his contract before this situation gets any uglier.

Running back play wins fantasy football titles. While you can get through the occasional tough bye week, the right play can help you score a victory you might otherwise have forsaken due to weak running back depth. All the big names are gone and people are likely pilfering running backs like crazy this week. It will be tough to find the right running back, but there are a few options.

Here is a rundown of some of the pertinent players that will be unavailable this weekend. It does not include every player, but rather focuses on guys that would normally make a fantasy impact. We’ll also put together some updates looking at some bye-week fill-ins you might not otherwise consider:

Here is a quick rundown of all the bye weeks coming up:

Earlier we took a look at the top adds for Week 5 according to fantasy experts around the Internet. Now, we’ll take a slightly different view of the top adds on the waiver wire this week. This time, we’ll turn to our partner, numberFire.com, and see what their computer database stuffed with stats thinks. They look at how much a player is performing over their expected average. The higher the percentage, the hotter they are. In addition, we’ll post their top trade/drop players. These are guys who you might want to outright drop, or guys who have a name and are under-performing, guys you might be able to trade for something of value.

Top Adds

One quarter of the season already gone. You wait so long through the offseason for the regular season games to arrive, then they blow past you in a blink of an eye. With four games in the books, you got a pretty good idea of where your current roster is heading. Whether it’s fine-tuning your team after a strong start, or trying to recover from a disastrous beginning, the waiver wire is the place to go.

SB Nation partner, playthisguy.com, has passed along their top 10 adds off the waiver wire for Week 5. They surveyed 22 sources of waiver wire advice and gathered that into their consensus picks.