Chiefs vs. Saints Fantasy Football Worksheet, Week 5

The Worksheet, a comprehensive fantasy football preview by Rich Hribar, breaks down everything you need to know about the Week 5 matchup between the Chiefs and Saints on Thursday Night Football.

Find a breakdown of every Week 5 NFL game in our Worksheet Hub.

Trust = spike production for that player

Quarterback

Patrick Mahomes: Mahomes was limited for fantasy again on Sunday, completing 19-of-29 (65.5%) of his passes for 245 yards with a touchdown and interception against the Chargers.

Closing the week as QB18 (13.0 points), Mahomes has yet to deliver a spike week for gamers, something going back to last season.

Mahomes has only one top-10 scoring week over his past 13 regular season games. 

He has only two top-6 scoring weeks since the start of last season.

He is averaging 5.6 air yards per pass attempt, 32nd in the league.

Mahomes has thrown a league-high 35.5% of his passes at or behind the line of scrimmage.

He can still uncork it, as evidenced by his touchdown to Xavier Worthy, but this offense has lacked consistent explosive plays downfield.

Now, he will be working without Rashee Rice after this team lost Isiah Pacheco and has not been able to get Marquise Brown on the field. 

With Rice out of the lineup, with Mahomes' ongoing run lacking spike weeks, and with this matchup lacking an objective angle to tap into ceiling upside, Mahomes is a QB2. 

He is too talented not to come around eventually, but for fantasy purposes, everything orbiting this offense is a rain cloud. 

As hinted at, this matchup is not great on the surface.

The Saints are allowing the fewest passing points per attempt (0.222).

They have allowed one touchdown pass through four weeks with 6 takeaways.

Dating back to last season, the Saints have allowed 5 top-10 scoring weeks to quarterbacks.

Derek Carr: After opening the season as QB6 and QB3 in weekly scoring, Carr has reverted to QB29 and QB26 the past two weeks.

Carr did have season highs in completions (28) and attempts (36) on Sunday, but he threw a season-low 16.7% of passes 10 yards or further downfield after rates of 39.1%, 37.5%, and 32.0% to open the year.

With the Saints on the road and with their team total of the early season, this is a tough spot to chase Carr as more than a floor-based QB2.

He runs into a tough Kansas City defense that has allowed more than one passing touchdown in just one game this season.

The Chiefs are rerunning an aggressive defense, playing man coverage on 30.5% of passing snaps (9th), and blitzing on 27.0% of dropbacks (13th).

Carr has completed only 58.8% of passes against man coverage (15th), as opposed to 75.3% against zone coverage (9th).

The Saints will be without Erick McCoy again and could miss Cesar Ruiz for another week.

When Carr has been pressured the past two weeks, he is 9-of-22 (40.9%) for 3.2 yards per pass attempt.

Running Back

Alvin Kamara: Kamara turned in another heavy workload game on Sunday, rushing 19 times for 77 yards and a touchdown and catching 7-of-9 targets for 42 yards through the air.

Kamara lost 2 touchdowns to Taysom Hill last week, but Hill picked up another abdominal injury and is questionable for Monday Night.

Kamara has at least 20 touches in every game this season, which have propelled him to clear 100 yards from scrimmage in all four games.

We will need that high workload here to carry Kamara as an RB1.

The Chiefs have allowed only 3.12 YPC to running backs (second in the league) and 8.7 rushing points per game to backfields (4th).

They are also 2nd in the NFL in receiving points allowed per game (5.9) to backs. 

Chiefs RBs: This backfield has many moving parts after last week’s game. 

Carson Steele started the game and played 6-of-8 snaps, handling every backfield touch.

But he lost his second fumble on the season, and the Chiefs shut him down.

Steele played only 5 more snaps for the rest of the game and did not touch the football.

From then on, Kareem Hunt played 25 snaps and Samaje Perine 22.

Hunt rushed 14 times for 69 yards, catching 2-of-3 targets for 16 yards.

Perine ran the ball 5 times for 14 yards and a touchdown without a target.

The Chiefs expect Clyde Edwards-Helaire to practice this week, adding another potential wrinkle to this backfield. 

We follow his status to see if he is active for Week 5.

Initial thoughts will be that Hunt will handle early-down opportunities with Perine in the role he has played, but this is a nebulous situation on all fronts.

Outside of hoping to get this right, we need a touchdown from whoever you are plugging into lineups.

The Saints have been softer defending the run than the pass, posting a 57.8% success rate against running back runs (25th) with 5.2 YPC (30th) on those runs.

Wide Receiver

Chris Olave: Olave gave gamers a scare heading into Sunday with a hamstring issue, but he played with no restrictions, catching 8-of-10 targets for 87 yards.

He missed a touchdown on a throw that could have been better from Derek Carr, but we have seen that this New Orleans passing tree is condensed. 

Despite this offense failing to match their point totals from Weeks 1-2, Olave has turned in solid lines. 

After 8.3% of the targets in Week 1, Olave has garnered 40%, 26.1%, and 27.8% of the looks in the past three games.

The Saints have started to move him around a bit.

After playing 14.6% and 5.0% of his snaps in the slot to open the year, those rates have been 27.3% and 21.8% in the past two games.

We will need Klint Kubiak to provide creative usage here because the Chiefs have done an excellent job taking away lead targets in the passing game to open the year.

They allow 6.7 yards per target to the opposing WR1 options (9th) and 51.5 yards per game (10th) to those lead wideouts.

Getting Olave into the slot more this week can be advantageous since Kansas City has allowed 53.7% of the receptions to receivers to come from the slot, the 3rd-highest percentage in the league.

They still only allow 6.6 yards per target on those throws (14th), but it is a way to get Olave involved.

The other element that offers upside for Olave as a WR2 is that he has excelled against man coverage.

On the small sample to open this season, Olave has 40% of the team targets against man coverage with 3.07 yards per route run.

Rashid Shaheed: Shaheed set career-highs with 11 targets and 8 receptions on Sunday, turning them into 83 yards.

We mentioned last week that nobody should have panicked about his goose egg in Week 3, that his role in the offense was sturdy, and that he was getting the most out of his early career.

Shaheed had a season-high 30.6% of the team targets in Week 4 and has cleared 20% of the team targets in every game this season.

If he is going to mix in high-floor games like Sunday paired with his ceiling upside, this is a player you want in your lineups as an upside WR3 every week, even if you hit a few down notes like Week 3.

Shaheed and Olave make up 50% of the New Orleans targets, the condensed target tree we like in fantasy football.

Shaheed has been targeted on 28.2% of his routes against zone coverage as opposed to an 18.8% rate versus man, so the matchup does him no favors. 

We will need some, though, on Sunday’s short usage here because the Chiefs have defended the deep ball well.

Kansas City has allowed 8-of-22 targets (36.4%) to wide receivers 10 or more yards downfield to be completed, 4th in the league.

Xavier Worthy: Worthy is the next man up in this offense now, with Rice's injury on Sunday.

Worthy is still the fastest man on the field, as evidenced by his 54-yard touchdown, but with Rice out, they will have to put more on Worthy’s plate over the limited usage he has had to open the year.

26.7% of his targets have been screen passes, while another 20% have been go routes. 

Worthy has yet to clear 4 targets in a game, but he ran a route on 83.9% of the dropbacks with Rice sidelined on Sunday, which trailed only Travis Kelce.

Worthy has per-target upside, but he is still a volatile WR3/FLEX option because he takes a step of faith that he will be used differently and more often while this is a tough matchup.

The Saints have opened the season 4th in points allowed per target to wide receivers (1.36) after being 6th in that department in 2023 (1.57).

Chiefs WRs: With Rice off the field on Sunday, the route leaders at wide receiver after Worthy were Justin Watson (23), JuJu Smith-Schuster (18), Mecole Hardman (7), and Skyy Moore (4).

Watson was the only one of those players to catch a pass (2-27-0) with Rice sidelined.

This is not a unit I would chase outside of single-game DFS based on the matchup highlighted above.

Tight End

Travis Kelce: After a slow start to the season in which Kelce passed the torch as the primary target to Rashee Rice, he is now the best receiver they have to run things through in the short term.

Kelce had his best game of the year in Week 4, catching 7-of-9 targets for 89 yards.

With Rice off the field, Kelce had 28.0% of the team targets and was targeted on 24.1% of his routes, both season highs. 

That usage alone will push Kelce back up the ladder as the top fantasy tight end, given the state of the position.

The Saints play a lot of man coverage (36.7%, 6th in the league). 

Kelce has been targeted on 20.0% of his routes with 2.93 yards per route versus man coverage this season compared to 16.5% against zone coverage with 0.82 yards per route. 

The Saints will be without Wilie Gay here, and Demario Davis missed his first career game last week due to a hamstring injury. 

If Davis misses another game, Kelce gains more matchup appeal.

Juwan Johnson: Johnson has eased back into the lineup after a foot injury this preseason, but Sunday, he ran a route on a season-high 71.1% of the dropbacks after rates of 46.2%, 23.5%, and 48.1% to start the season.

That only resulted in 2 catches for 13 yards (3 targets) but gives Johnson a pulse on showdown slates or for gamers throwing darts at any tight end they can find.

The Chiefs have allowed spike weeks to Isaiah Likely (9-111-1) and Mike Gesicki (7-91-0) and even allowed a 50-yard catch to Kyle Pitts in Week 3.

Taysom Hill: Hill was finally involved in opening last week’s game, rushing for a pair of touchdowns, but he suffered an abdominal injury that forced him from the game.

We will follow his status for Monday, but if he can play, he is best played as a single-game DFS dart chasing a short rushing scoring opportunity.

More Week 5 Fantasy Breakdowns From The Worksheet: