Fantasy Football Panic Meter, Week 5: Examining our most regrettable draft choices

This week's Panic Meter is more an airing of grievances. We asked for your biggest draft day regrets and you, the fantasy community, generously indulged us. Today, in lieu of any useful fantasy advice, we offer a forum in which you may call out the draft decisions that continue to haunt you.

Darren Waller, New York Giants

Waller was the most common answer by an outrageous margin. It was a blue wave, basically. Recency bias may have played a role, of course. Waller had just produced yet another 3-for-21 fantasy line on Monday night, in New York's not-at-all-competitive home loss to Seattle. Waller hasn't yet visited the end zone this season and, in three of his four games, he's caught three passes for fewer than 40 yards. Not helpful.

Unfortunately, there are no obvious reasons to be optimistic if you're a Giants fan, or tied to Waller in your fantasy life. Daniel Jones is currently averaging just 191.3 passing yards per game, he's already exceeded his full-season interception total from 2022 and he's been sacked a ridiculous 22 times. Also, Jones' head coach is plainly disgusted with the QB's decision-making. Tough scene.

Right now, Waller is essentially like a much-older version of this other very disappointing tight end ...

Kyle Pitts, Atlanta Falcons

Listen, I've been making the argument to get rid of tight end as a distinct position in fantasy, and you guys keep rejecting me. So this is what you get. Every year, another new batch of would-be challengers to Travis Kelce's throne are foisted upon you by the fantasy expert community, and every year they are quickly exposed as imposters.

Pitts will not, in fact, break the game this season — at least not in a good way. We all agree that he's a huge talent, but, sadly, we are not allowed to have input in Arthur Smith's game-planning. Pitts is stuck on roughly five targets per week, which generally yields two catches and an unhelpful yardage total.

He's leading all tight ends in air-yards per target (11.6), if that sort of thing excites you. But we should also mention that not all air-yards are of equal quality:

Oof. This isn't getting better any time soon, we're sorry to report.

Cam Akers, Minnesota Vikings (now)

Let the record show that some of you actually drafted Akers and Pitts back-to-back, a double-scoop of misery that's gonna be difficult to overcome:

In opening week, Akers earned the rare distinction of being one of the only backs in league history to score single-digit fantasy points in a game in which he received 20 touches and reached the end zone. That's no easy feat. Akers lost the lead role in the Rams' backfield before the season even started and he now has a chance to not win the top spot on the Vikings depth chart, too. Let's see if he can somehow find his way to Baltimore before the end of the year to not take Gus Edwards' touches.

Ja'Marr Chase, Cincinnati Bengals

Mike really gets to the heart of the matter here. It's not accurate to say that Chase isn't producing — the man has 19 receptions for 214 yards over the past two weeks — but if you took him second overall, um ... whoops. You coulda had Christian McCaffrey and his seven touchdowns or Tyreek Hill and his four.

Instead, you're stuck watching a clearly compromised Joe Burrow lobbing short passes at his elite vertical threats (6.6 ADOT). When the Bengals do attempt to stretch the field, it fails; Burrow is just 1-for-10 so far on throws traveling 20-plus yards downfield. There's very little chance Chase's upside can be unlocked while his quarterback is this limited.

Miles Sanders, Carolina Panthers

Sanders had a get-right matchup against Minnesota on Sunday, but he did not, in fact, get right. He converted 16 touches into only 32 scrimmage yards and he was out-snapped by Chuba Hubbard, 39 to 31. Sanders is actually on pace to see the highest target total of his career by far, but he's averaging just 5.4 yards per catch this season and 3.5 per touch. Yikes.

He entered last week with a groin issue, so perhaps that's the reason for his limited usage and general ineffectiveness. Sanders is also attached to an offense that ranks bottom-third in both total yardage and scoring, which isn't helping him. All those wide rushing lanes in Philly are a distant memory.

Justin Fields, Chicago Bears

Yeah, I am definitely not getting dragged into yet another examination of my hometown team, an inept and joyless group that hasn't won a regular season NFL game since last October. I will simply refer you to the archives for my thoughts on the Bears generally and Fields specifically. Click here or here or here. Going forward, let's just assume a constant simmering rage for me regarding this franchise.

No matter how much you may regret any of your fantasy decisions this season, at least you aren't this poor Chicago fan who has to live with this disastrous call for the next decade-or-so in dynasty...

Absolute. Agony. 🫠

Jahmyr Gibbs, Detroit Lions

By any reasonable standard, Gibbs is having an excellent first season. But fantasy managers are not known to be particularly reasonable nor patient.

Let's simply note that Gibbs has caught 14 of 18 targets and he's averaging just over 60 scrimmage yards per game. That ain't bad. It's just not what you were banking on when you took him in the third or fourth round — way ahead of Detroit's lead back, David Montgomery. Despite having missed a game due to injury, Montgomery has made five house calls and he's the overall RB9 on the season. He's been terrific, particularly near the goal-line, which creates an obstacle for Gibbs.

Still, there's a subset of fantasy managers who seem to believe that Monty is obviously inferior to the rookie, because of YPC or draft status or various other reasons. To them, we offer an actual NFL running back discussing the Lions backfield:

If you've been dissatisfied with Gibbs to this point, I'm pretty sure you can unload him via trade right now to anyone who drafted this guy...

Najee Harris, Pittsburgh Steelers

He truly has been a disappointment, no question. Even for those of us who entered the season with minimal expectations for Harris, he's somehow fallen short.

Harris actually began to slip into a job-share with Jaylen Warren in the second half of last season, but it never rose to the level of a fantasy crisis because he was consistently reaching the end zone (seven times in his final eight games). This season, Harris can't buy a touchdown and he's been severely out-targeted by Warren (22 to 8), so his tenuous grip on lead back status has been exposed. He hasn't played more than 57% of the offensive snaps in any game this season and he played only 49% of the snaps at Houston last Sunday.

It's an issue. Definitely not everything you were hoping for when you took Harris at his top-30 ADP.

Also bad: Pittsburgh's offense these days is a bleak, barren, inhospitable environment in which a committee back can't hope to thrive.