Superstar tight end Brock Bowers broke records during his rookie season but hasn’t quite looked himself in 2025 after sustaining a knee injury back in Week 1. While he’s gritted his teeth and played through the issue in each game since, the Raiders standout logged a limited practice on Wednesday and then a DNP on Thursday, raising the question of whether he’ll end up good to go in Week 5 against the Colts. If he doesn’t play, fantasy football managers who took the star in early rounds find themselves in need of a last-minute replacement for starting lineups on Sunday.
If Bowers is ruled out for Week 5, here are three streamer tight ends to consider for fantasy football lineups.
Top Week 5 streamer TEs
Theo Johnson
The Giants have a massive void to fill at pass catcher with the season-ending ACL injury star wideout Malik Nabers suffered in Week 4. Wide receivers Wan’Dale Robinson and Darius Slayton likely step up in Nabers’ absence, but a sneaky beneficiary of the newfound target volume could be tight end Theo Johnson. The 2024 fourth-round pick averaged just 5.7 FPPG as a rookie with 5.4 FPPG this season, but he posted a fantasy-relevant week last Sunday when Nabers went down.
The final line of three catches for 17 yards and a touchdown on five targets doesn’t pop off the box score, but the important part here is target share rather than efficiency. He finished at 24% in Week 4, a number which may remain sticky with Nabers now sidelined (28.2% target share on the year). At 6-foot-6 and 264 pounds, he’s a gargantuan target for rookie quarterback Jaxson Dart, who makes his second career NFL start against the Saints. New Orleans allows an average of seven targets per game to tight ends, so with big shoes to fill in the receiving game, there’s some sleeper appeal here for Johnson.
Mason Taylor
This rookie tight end may or may not be available depending on how sharp your league-mates are, but if he’s out there, he’s a great add. That goes not only for Week 5, but moving forward in general. Mason Taylor earned second-round draft capital this past April and instantly slotted in as the Jets’ top tight end with snap shares of 72% or better in each of his first four NFL appearances. Getting on the field is half the battle for players in the available pool of fantasy free agents, so Taylor’s doing well in that regard.
His first three weeks were quiet, but the rookie posted 11.5 PPR points in Week 4 with five receptions for 65 yards on seven targets. His longest catch went for 27 yards, and he’s hauled in a couple of other passes for 18 and 20 yards across his six receptions from Weeks 1-3. Over his last two appearances, Taylor garnered six and seven targets from both Tyrod Taylor and Justin Fields, so it seems he’s becoming a more reliable factor in this offense. In Week 5, the Jets take on a very soft Cowboys pass defense that allowed seven receptions to Dallas Goedert and five catches to Tucker Kraft earlier this season. The Dallas defense also allows plenty of points, so a potential shootout could lead to plenty of fantasy points if both offenses are firing.
Chig Okonkwo
The Titans’ offense may look like a relative disaster thus far, but this column looks for last-ditch starters. Chig Okonkwo sits third on the team with 19 targets this season with 13 catches, the most of any pass catcher. His average of 6.3 FPPG doesn’t look fantastic, but the usage certainly isn’t bad for a playable week or two in fantasy football. One interesting point here is that the tight end lined up in the slot on 40% of his snaps and 58% of his targets actually came from that alignment.
That big slot deployment can certainly help provide a little bit of upside. Okonkwo also sees some routes in the intermediate game on some crossers, plus Calvin Ridley is questionable to play Sunday against the Cardinals. The matchup is a good one for the tight end since Arizona allows the fifth-most receptions and sixth-most receiving yards to the position. The eye test says Cam Ward plays better football than his stats suggest, so perhaps Okonkwo can pay off as a last-minute option.
