7 Picks Fantasy Football Managers Already Regret After NFL Week 5

With Week 5 of the 2025 NFL season now complete, the fantasy football regular season is already a third of the way through in most leagues.

It's now time to face the stark reality that a significant number of players taken early in fantasy drafts have been incredibly disappointing this season.

These selections have been hamstringing managers who have continued to start them with the hopes they'll finally return to the form that saw them come off the board within the first few rounds.

While there's still time to recover from these poor starts, there's also more than enough data on hand to project how the rest of the season will go.

Managers who have been sticking with these woefully underperforming players must start accepting that after more than a month of underwhelming results, things are looking bleak and replacements need to be found via trades and waiver claims in order to salvage the season.

Discounting players who have missed significant time or are out for the rest of the season due to injuries—a painful but expected part of fantasy football—here's a look at seven players who have let managers down during the early portion of the campaign.

Fantasy points, rankings and ADPs courtesy of FantasyPros' PPR data

QB Kyler Murray, Arizona Cardinals

AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

ADP: QB9 (No. 83 Overall)

Current: QB17 (No. 35 Overall)

The Cardinals went into 2025 with hopes of taking their passing game to new heights while developing Marvin Harrison Jr. into a bona fide star to partner with veteran quarterback Kyler Murray.

While Harrison has flashed the gamebreaking potential that led to him being an early pick in the 2024 draft, he's been one of the only competent pass-catchers for a passing attack that ranks No. 30 in the league over the first five weeks.

Murray has been a disappointment in 2025, averaging just 192.4 yards per game through the air—far and away the worst mark of his seven-year career. He's only thrown six touchdowns and has been responsible for three interceptions. Perhaps most concerningly for fantasy purposes, he is also failing to generate much offense with his legs.

After scoring five touchdowns in 2024, the 28-year-old is only on pace for a shade over three this season. He's recorded just 173 yards on his 29 totes, a yards per carry average of 6.0 that is a noticeable drop from his 7.3 YPC mark in 2024.

As it stands, Murray is a borderline-unusable fantasy starter as the QB17, well off the mark from his QB9 ADP. While he hasn't posted fewer than 14 points in any contest, he also hasn't reached the 20-point mark in any, either.

Those are unacceptably low scores for a consensus top-10 QB, one who will need to figure things out if the Cardinals are going to snap a three-game losing skid and get back in the playoff hunt.

RB Derrick Henry, Tennessee Titans

AP Photo/Nick Wass

ADP: RB5 (No. 10 Overall)

Current: RB23 (No. 74 Overall)

Derrick Henry has been one of the most reliable fantasy backs to roster during this generation, but it seems his time in the NFL's upper echelon may be coming to an end.

Between the 2019 and 2024 seasons, he averaged 18.9 or more points in all but one year—which was a still-respectable 14.5-point per game campaign in 2023. In his first season with the Ravens, he averaged nearly 20 points per game and finished as 2024's RB4 with a total of 336.4 points.

It initially appeared Henry would continue on that same pace or better in 2025 after the veteran tallied a whopping 29.2 points in the opener, but the year has instead brought a massive drop-off for the 31-year-old and the rest of the Ravens.

Over the past four games, Henry has failed to crack the 11-point mark and reached double digits just once. His 2.3-point showing in Week 2 was his lowest tally since a two-point outing in Week 3 of the 2023 season.

With a league-worst defense failing to keep opponents from scoring and leading to the Ravens needing to pass far more than they'd prefer on offense, as well as an injury-ravaged offensive line making things more difficult when Baltimore is handing the ball to Henry, it seems highly unlikely he will return to his high-scoring ways on a consistent basis.

Add in Henry's fumbling woes—he's coughed up two already this season after losing just one in all of 2024—and it's shaping up to be a massively disappointing year for his managers.

While Henry could still have another big day here and there, the current RB23 will find it difficult to post a top-20 finish in 2025.

WR Ja'Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals

AP Photo/Bart Young

ADP: WR1 (No. 1 Overall)

Current: WR9 (No. 29 Overall)

It's starting to seem like being the consensus No. 1 overall fantasy pick is a curse.

Ja'Marr Chase—the top overall choice in 2025—has been following in the footsteps of Christian McCaffrey (2024), Justin Jefferson (2023), Jonathan Taylor (2022) by letting down managers who were excited to land him at the top of their league's draft.

Unlike the previous No. 1 fantasy picks, Chase has thus far managed to remain healthy. His quarterback hasn't, though, and the drop-off from Joe Burrow to Jake Browning has significantly hampered Chase's ability to put up the same type of stat lines he did last year on a consistent basis.

Although he went into the 2024 campaign as the WR4, Chase had a dominant year,tallying a herculean, NFL-best 403 fantasy points as the focal point of the Cincinnati Bengals' high-powered passing attack.

He had just one game with fewer than 11 points all of last season (a 7.5-point Week 2 showing), but the receiver already failed to break the double-digit mark thrice in the first five games of this season.

While Chase hasn't been a complete bust—his 36.5-point WR3 finish in Week 2 and 29-point WR2 showing in Week 5 have prevented that—he's been maddeningly inconsistent with three games under nine points.

An average of 17.3 points per game puts Chase on par with Quentin Johnston (who had an ADP of 222 this year) for the ninth best at the receiver position in 2025.

Although it's not too late for Chase to salvage the season and Burrow will eventually be back in time for the fantasy playoffs, this type of start isn't what anyone was envisioning when they landed the Bengals star at No. 1 overall.

WR Brian Thomas Jr., Jacksonville Jaguars

AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez

ADP: WR8 (No. 15 Overall)

Current: WR54 (No. 181 Overall)*

*Rankings and stats recorded prior to Jacksonville's Week 5 Monday Night Football appearance.

In the span of a single season, Brian Thomas Jr. went from being one of the league's most exciting young playmakers to seemingly an afterthought in the Jacksonville Jaguars offense.

BTJ was one of the best fantasy values in all of 2024, outperforming his WR48 ADP to finish as the WR4 with a whopping 284 fantasy points. He was the focal point of Jacksonville's passing attack, logging a team-high 133 targets and converting those into 87 receptions for 1,282 yards and 10 touchdowns.

That outstanding rookie season has been followed by a brutal sophomore slump. Thomas went into 2025 as the WR8 and No. 15 overall player on draft boards, but he is only hovering near the top 50 at his position through five weeks.

New head coach Liam Coen's system hasn't been kind to Thomas. While he still leads the Jags in targets with 32, he's third on the team with a meager 12 receptions and has converted those into just 164 yards and zero touchdowns. He failed to crack double digits for fantasy points in each of the first three weeks before turning in an unsightly 10.6 points in Week 4.

There's still some hope Thomas could get things going in the final two-thirds of 2025, but this rough start will make it difficult for him to live up to his lofty preseason billing.

WR AJ Brown, Philadelphia Eagles

AP Photo/Chris Szagola

ADP: WR10 (No. 21 Overall)

Current: WR40 (No. 132 Overall)

A.J. Brown's disappearance has been one of the biggest fantasy storylines of the 2025 season. One of the main driving forces behind the Philadelphia Eagles' offensive successes since being traded to the organization in 2022, he has been a complete non-factor to start the campaign.

Through the first five weeks, the 28-year-old has meager marks of 19 catches for 194 yards and one touchdown. That equates to just 44.4 fantasy points, good for a pedestrian WR40 standing and a far cry from his WR10 ADP.

Although Brown did regress slightly in 2024 with a WR20 finish to a campaign he missed four games in, he was expected to return to top-10 form this year. He had posted back-to-back top-six seasons during his first two years in Philadelphia and seemed to have strong potential to post more elite numbers when healthy.

Brown is only on par for 660 receiving yards this season, and it doesn't seem the Eagles need him to do much more than that to win games.

Philly only suffered its first loss of the season in Week 5, a game in which Brown put up 9.3 fantasy points—his second-most of 2025—despite making it clear he wanted to be more involved leading up to the contest.

With the Eagles fully embracing a ground-and-pound offense with Saquon Barkley and Jalen Hurts as the catalysts for moving the chains and putting points on the board, Brown is trending towards his worst fantasy season yet and may not get back to being a top performer while he remains a member of the organization.

WR Ladd McConkey, Los Angeles Chargers

AP Photo/Carrie Giordano

ADP: WR11 (No. 26 Overall)

Current: WR38 (No. 121 Overall)

Ladd McConkey is yet another hyped second-year player who has let his fantasy managers down during a rough sophomore slump.

The breakout Los Angeles Chargers star of 2024 has been struggling to put up anything close to the consistently great numbers he had as a rookie.

McConkey came into 2025 on the heels of a WR12 season, one in which he emerged as one of the most reliable weapons in the league. He didn't score fewer than 11.4 points from Week 8 on and had a massive 29.4-point outing in Week 17 that cinched up a number of fantasy league championships.

Given his WR11 ADP and status as the WR38 through the first five weeks, those who were hoping for a repeat of last year's performance can't be too pleased.

McConkey has been underwhelming for much of the year. He's broken double digits just twice—in the opener and in his 2025-best 14.9-point game in Week 5—with several poor performances, including a career-worst 2.1-point outing in Week 4, sandwiched between.

The Chargers shifted their offense this year and are leaning more heavily on Quentin Johnston and Keenan Allen to shoulder more of the pass-catching load. McConkey only rates third on the team in targets—trailing the aforementioned two wideouts—and has just one reception more than rookie running back Omarion Hampton.

While back-to-back losses could lead to the Bolts shaking things up and getting McConkey more involved, it's unlikely he'll return to his rookie form without an injury clearing a path for him to get more targets and touches.

TE Brock Bowers, Las Vegas Raiders

AP Photo/Jeff Lewis

ADP: TE1 (No. 19 Overall)

Current: TE16 (No. 141 Overall)

Brock Bowers was a breath of fresh air in 2024, entering the league and putting up massive numbers at a tight end position that desperately needed new faces to thrive for fantasy purposes.

Rather than build on that incredible debut, the Las Vegas Raiders star has instead experienced a significant regression this season.

Bowers had a ton of hype heading into fantasy draft season on the back of his 262.7-point rookie campaign. He led the position in points scored and appeared poised to improve on those already-impressive metrics after the Raiders upgraded the quarterback position by trading for Geno Smith.

Injuries and a lack of rapport with Smith have led to Bowers being one of the biggest disappointments of the 2025 fantasy campaign. He's currently the TE16 with a modest 43.5-point total and hasn't even broken double digits since his 15.3-point showing to start the year.

While Bowers had managed to play through the knee issue he picked up in Week 1, it was impacting his ability to dominate defenses and collect monster stat lines.

Notching just 14 catches for 122 yards in the three games that followed a five-catch, 103-yard opener, the team shut the tight end down in Week 5 to allow him time to heal the PCL and bone bruise issues he's been dealing with.

With the Raiders sitting at 1-4 and likely already out of contention, they may not be in too much of a hurry to rush Bowers back and risk reinjury.

It's the right move for his long-term future, but it won't help fantasy managers who drafted him as the consensus TE1 with lofty expectations.