Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football QB Index: Week 5

Who are the top rated passers through week 5

By Paddi Cooper@PaddiCooper Oct 10, 2018, 10:30am EDT

Washington Redskins v New Orleans Saints

Well thank goodness for the late games this week. The 1 pm games on Sunday produced an underwhelming display from the NFL’s quarterbacks as they combined for a QB Index rating of 44.2%, some ten percentage points below the average rating from last week. Across the late games, Sunday Night and Monday Night Football, the signal callers sur-passed (see what I did there?) themselves, with a QB index rating of 62.1%, led by two of the league’s premier players in Philip Rivers and Drew Brees, who posted the two highest ratings of the week. Overall, Week 5 finished with an average rating of 52.2%, meaning season to date the overall rating sits at 52.9%, still nearly three percentage points above last season (50.1%).

Onto the players and the top rating of Week 5 came from Philip Rivers, who showed disdain for the Raiders defense as he carved them up for 339 yards, 2 touchdowns and a completion percentage of 81.5% as he finished with a QB Index rating of 90.9%, the 4th highest of the season so far. Right behind him was Drew Brees, who passed Peyton Manning for the most passing yards in NFL history in style as he completed a whopping 26 of 29 passes (89.7%) for 363 yards and 3 touchdowns as he posted his highest QB index rating for five years with an 89.4% rating. Brees has completed an unprecedented 77.9% of his passes through 5 games, and is doing so at an incredible 8.7 yards per attempt, which is third in the league. Brees and Rivers sit joint second in the overall rankings, and are just 2% behind current leader, Jared Goff, who still leads the way after a solid showing in Week 5 with a 62.1% rating as the Rams stayed perfect.

Both Ben Roethlisberger (75.8%) and Russell Wilson (71.2%) posted their best ratings of the season so far in Week 5 to finish third and fourth respectively. Whereas Big Ben is tracking inside the top 10 in both QB Index rating and fantasy points this season, Wilson remains well off his 2017 league leading fantasy pace, languishing in 22nd place with an average 15.93 points per game.

At the wrong end of the rankings, the same two players finished with the worst ratings for the second straight week. Josh Allen improved slightly in the Bills’ win over the Titans, though his 15.2% rating is still the fourth worst rating by any passer in 2017. Ryan Tannehill continues his slump with just 185 yards passing and two interceptions as he posted only a 18.2% rating as he and Dolphins let slip a 17-0 lead to lose 27-17 to the Bengals.

From a fantasy standpoint, Aaron Rodgers led the way in Week 5 with 28.68 points in a losing effort in Detroit, his highest fantasy total since the end of the 2016 season. Tom Brady also posted his highest fantasy total of the season as the Patriots made it back-to-back wins on Thursday night. At the opposite end, Marcus Mariota fell off massively after a 30 point outing in the victory over the Eagles in Week 4, with just 4.16 points against the Bills. Mariota is a can’t start player with that level of inconsistency at the present time.