Week 13 waddles through the doorway, gravy-stained, credit cards smoking, bankrolls bruised or swollen. Four games are already graded into your psyche—Packers–Lions, Ravens–Bengals, Cowboys–Chiefs, Bears–Eagles on Black Friday—and every league has that guy sitting at 92 points with three players already done. The rest of us wake up in the wreckage: half a lineup locked, half a lineup guessing, and a shortened Sunday that feels tighter, meaner, more personal than a clean slate ever does. This is the hangover window where edges shrink and roles finally stop lying. Target trees have been pruned by injury; committees have quietly snapped back into hierarchy. Offensive lines are either holding or leaking in ways that won’t suddenly change in December. Defenses have told you exactly which coverages they live in, which routes they can’t survive, which running backs turn their front sevens into cardio drills. The audience is bloated, the window is narrow, and someone in your league is about to chase the wrong name just because they scored on Thursday. With that in mind, here are my Five Lists of Five for Week 13: the must-starts you cannot get cute with, the breakout swings worth embracing, the matchup mirages you need to bench, the WR/CB collisions to exploit, and the running backs who can still flip an already dented week.
The refrain remains the same—All I want is for you to be better than your friends. You’re going to be surrounded by them on Sunday, probably. How sweet would it be if you could be sure you’ve checked every box possible that might guarantee you a resounding victory this week? Some kick-your-feet-up insights? I’ve got some. And I know my audience. The smoke-break audience. The quick-scan-of-the-phone-on-the-way-to-the-fridge audience. The I-ain’t-reading-all-that-but-good-luck folk. I’m a man of the people.
Below: Top five stash players for the fantasy football playoffs.
Here are the other offerings from my 2025 Fantasy Football Five Lists of Five: Week 13 edition:
- Top five must-start players for Week 13 of 2025 fantasy football
- Top five WR/CB matchups to target for Week 13 fantasy football
- Top five breakout wide receivers for 2025 fantasy football Week 13
- Top five breakout running backs for Week 13 of 2025 fantasy football
Follow my handle @dansby_edits for all preseason and fantasy draft kit content—as well as plenty of NFL betting goodies—all summer long. All my other fantasy football draft kit content is at the bottom of this list!
Top five players to stash for the 2025 fantasy football playoffs
Joshua Palmer, WR, Buffalo Bills
Josh Palmer looks like the boring name who quietly wins December. Buffalo’s pass tree has been redrawn on the fly: Dalton Kincaid sidelined, Keon Coleman a healthy scratch the last two weeks, Elijah Moore outright released, and Brandin Cooks dropped in as late-season depth. Over that two-game stretch without Kincaid and Coleman, Palmer handled 14% of the targets (second to Khalil Shakir’s 19%), but both were fed on 23% of their routes, and Palmer has run 79% of his routes outside.
He leads this room in middle-of-the-field target share over that span at 27%, and 22% of Josh Allen’s blitzed dropbacks have gone his way. Pittsburgh invites exactly those throws, allowing the league’s highest middle-field pass rate (31%) and the second-highest target rate to outside receivers (46%), while ranking 31st in schedule-adjusted fantasy points allowed to wideouts and second-worst to tight ends.
On a talent level, Palmer sits 15th out of 146 qualifiers in EPA per route vs man coverage at +0.258, while Cooks, Coleman, and Tyrell Shavers all languish near the bottom with sub-0.05 marks. That’s how you supersede a rookie lottery ticket: you run ahead of him in two-receiver sets, earn co-lead target rates in the exact coverage shells your opponent leans on, and grade like a real man-beater while the new veteran signing is mostly a logo. If Palmer’s Week 13 health holds, he’s both an immediate upside flier and a playoff stash tied to an elite quarterback.
Xavier Legette, WR, Carolina Panthers
Xavier Legette is the kind of stash you make when you’re chasing role, not name value. Jalen Coker is fully healthy now; he missed Weeks 1-6, but since Week 7 the Panthers have finally had Tetairoa McMillan, Legette, and Coker on the field together in every Bryce Young start. In those five games, Legette sits just behind McMillan in raw target share (15.2% vs 21.9%) but right there in first-read share at 20.3%, then narrows the gap further in disguised looks where both climb to 26.1–28.3% target share and matching 36.7% first-read usage.
His targets per route run jump to 0.29 in those same disguised situations, edging McMillan’s 0.25, and on non–play-action dropbacks he actually clears him in yards per route and TPRR. Coker’s health hasn’t crowded him out; even now, Coker sits stuck in single-digit target share and shows up in matchup notes mostly as a name to avoid. The Rams defense Legette draws this week is an underneath sieve, allowing the fourth-most receiving yards on throws within ten yards and playing with one of the league’s heaviest disguised-coverage rates. That’s exactly where Legette’s first-read in-breakers live.
You’re stashing him because the Panthers have already told you what their three-wide world looks like when everyone is healthy—and he’s a co-primary, less a depth-chart security blanket.
Theo Johnson, TE, New York Giants
Theo Johnson is the exact tight end you want stashed before December hits full attrition. We already know what he looked like with Jaxson Dart earlier this year: over that seven-start stretch he lived in the low-end TE1 range, roughly TE10 in points per game with five top-12 finishes. That came on real routes, not gadget snaps. He was on the field for about 70 to 75% of dropbacks, and when he ran a route he drew a target on roughly 18 to 20% of them. That’s wide receiver three territory, not “hope he falls in the end zone” territory.
The usage under the hood matches that feel. In that Dart window he averaged a little over six targets per game, sat in the mid-teens in target share, and quietly handled double-digit red-zone looks, including multiple end-zone targets. His yards per route run lived in the 1.6 to 1.8 range, which is the same band where the real every-week guys sit. When the Giants leaned into play-action and RPO, that number jumped over 2.0 because he becomes the first read on the glance and seam concepts that pull linebackers out of phase.
Now Dart is back, Wan’Dale Robinson is vacuuming underneath volume, and the perimeter rotation is still unsettled. That is a perfect ecosystem for a tight end who has already proved he can be Dart’s security blanket on third down and in the red area. You are stashing a player who has already functioned like a TE1 with this quarterback and now gets a December slate that fits exactly how he earns his points.
Jayden Higgins, WR, Houston Texans
Houston has quietly turned Jayden Higgins into a volume piece, and the recent numbers are loud if you look. Over his last five games he’s hit at least seven targets, four receptions, and 9.5 fantasy points in four of them, with three total touchdowns in that span. Week 12 against Buffalo was basically a snapshot of the new role: nine targets, a 30% target share, four catches, 38 yards, a score, and a 58% snap share. That’s we-call-the-play-with-his-number-in-the-progression usage.
The route-level data backs it up. Since climbing into this role he’s been on the field for a majority of dropbacks and turned those snaps into solid efficiency against man, with 1.11 yards per route run and an 0.18 targets-per-route rate on 56 routes in that coverage. That may not scream superstar, but paired with the target volume it paints a clear WR3 profile that is still sitting on waivers in a lot of leagues.
The Week 13 matchup is ugly on paper, which is exactly why he’s a stash and not a must-start. Indianapolis has shifted into man on 38.8% of coverage snaps since adding Sauce Gardner, top three in the league, and they allow the fifth-most yards per target but the third-fewest yards per reception to wideouts on the perimeter. That means tight windows, contested catches, and probably another gritty box score instead of a blowup.
But that’s the point. Higgins is already living in the seven-to-nine targets most weeks neighborhood, with real touchdown involvement, before the schedule softens. You stash that profile now, ride out the tough corner matchups, and let the volume and usage cash in when the coverage lightens in Weeks 14 through 17.
Brenton Strange, TE, Jacksonville Jaguars
Brenton Strange already looks like the tight end people wish they’d stashed two weeks ago. Coming off IR in Week 12, he stepped right back in and caught all five of his targets for a career-high 93 yards, dropping 14.3 fantasy points and finishing as the TE4 on the week. Over his five full games this season he’s averaging 10.3 fantasy points; stretched over a full year, that would sit around TE14 territory. That production is built on real volume, not fluky touchdowns. He still hasn’t found the end zone, yet he’s seeing 5.6 targets per game and a 16.7% target share in his healthy outings.
Jacksonville’s own projections back up the role. For Week 13, Strange is slotted as the TE16 with 8.8 projected points in a game where the Jaguars are expected to score 24 against Tennessee. The Titans have actually been tough on tight ends, holding Tyler Warren twice and Trey McBride under 12 fantasy points, which is why Strange is more stash than slam-dunk streamer this week. But the schedule past Sunday is the real tell. Over the next five weeks he gets the Titans, the Jets, and the Colts twice, with that second Indianapolis matchup landing in Week 17. The Colts have given up the fourth-most fantasy points to tight ends this year, exactly the kind of opponent you want circled for a fantasy championship.
He’s rostered in only 16% of leagues, which means most people are still treating that 93-yard game like a blip. The usage and the playoff schedule say otherwise. Strange is a volume TE2 now with a very real path to TE1 weeks when it matters most.
