DL Streaming 101: Week 5
Professor IDP looks at the best DE and DT streaming options in your IDP fantasy football leagues for Week 5.
Welcome to the Week 5 edition of DL Streaming 101!
Let’s start with a recap of last week, since it was a very good week for streaming! We hit a new high of 13.5 points per game among our 20 streaming calls in Week 4. If you subtract out Tuli Tuipulotu’s 61.9 point performance, the average was still a very strong 10.95! In addition to Tuli’s big day, Vita Vea and Nick Herbig both posted DL1 performances as streamers. All told, 11/20 streamers scored 10 or more fantasy points in Week 4.
Overall, streaming has now had a 44% success rate (streamers scoring over 10 points) with 14.6% boom games over 20 points, and only 1.33% (1 player) who would have left you with a 0 for the week. The overall average is a solid 10.54 points per game, with ideal plays coming in at 17.89, solid at 9.03, solid (deeper) at 10.33, and dart throws at 3.13. The 2025 ECR average is 12.53, so there is only a 1.99 pt difference between streaming and studs, with “ideal” streamers currently ahead of studs by 5.36 PPG!
Enough about last week (and 2025). Let’s get into Week 5, which features some studs on bye including Micah Parsons, T.J. Watt, and Cameron Heyward. While this may crunch your roster if you were lucky enough to stack Parsons/Watt, it creates many opportunities for streaming, and there are 20 streamers this week with a rating of ideal, solid, or solid (deeper), so we do not have to dip into dart-throw territory!
Featured DL Streamers
Dallas Turner, DE, MIN (🎓🎓🎓🎓)
If I were to place a friendly wager on the player most likely to get a sack in Week 5, it would be hard not to bet on Vikings edge rusher, Dallas Turner. With Andrew Van Ginkel currently trending in the wrong direction before a London Game, Turner is an ideal play (let alone stream) in Week 5. In MFL, which skews towards larger dynasty IDP leagues, Turner is rostered in only 33% of leagues (tied for the 40th most rostered DE). On Sleeper, which trends towards smaller redraft IDP leagues, he is rostered in only 8%.
Even in the shallowest of leagues (i.e., start 5 or fewer total IDP), I am playing Turner. He has a very nice 69.1 PFF pass rush grade in the season, having generated 11 pressures (one sack). He played 100% of snaps in Week 4. What has me salivating is the fact that this formidable Vikings d-line will be facing the lowly Browns this week, who will be giving rookie Dillon Gabriel his first start.
With veteran Joe Flacco at the helm, Cleveland allowed a league-high 67 pressures. Flacco bore responsibility for generating just 4.5% of those pressures (7th-best rate in the league). It is hard to imagine things will get better for the Browns this week, and Turner is likely a widely available beneficiary of this matchup.
Derrick Brown, DT, CAR (🎓🎓🎓🎓)
The former DT1 has been a bit slower in returning to his former glory than many (myself included) may have hoped. Brown currently sits at DL89 (DT35) a quarter of the way through the 2025 NFL season. The upshot of this slow start is that his rostership has remained low enough and his underlying metrics strong enough that he is sitting out there as an ideal DL streamer in many leagues.
Brown currently grades out as the DL20 on the season, but his underlying PFF pass rush grade (73.1) has only translated to a mere five pressures with zero sacks. His playing time remained ideal at 76% despite the return of free agent addition Tershawn Wharton last week. Despite grading out as one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, the Dolphins have not allowed many points to opposing DT, but they did surrender 11.75 to Quinnen Williams in Week 4 and 22.75 to Milton Williams in Week 2.
Brown is easily in the same tier as these two great tackles, and this could well be the week where we see a return to (fantasy) form.
Jaelan Phillips, DE, MIA (🎓🎓🎓)
Going to the other side of the Panthers-Dolphins matchup, we see Jaelan Phillips, who has largely become an afterthought in many IDP leagues as he is rostered in only 44% of MFL IDP leagues and 3% of Sleeper leagues. Aside from name recognition by playing Brown and Phillips head-to-head, it also gives you something to look forward to if you somehow get stuck at a bar that is only showing Panthers-Dolphins!
Phillips’ underlying metrics are not as well-rounded as the aforementioned Brown, but his 75.5 pass rush grade has produced 13 pressures with 0 sacks in 2025 (currently the most pressures without a sack in the NFL). Phillips has also played an increasing snap share as the season has progressed, hitting a peak of 76% last week, with the team relegating Chop Robinson to a rotational role.
The Panthers have been an enigma for fantasy managers with opposing edges, stifling the strong rooms of Jacksonville and New England, while allowing three 17+ point performances to a trio of Cardinals in Week 2. No player is more due for positive sack regression than Phillips this week, making him a strong streaming option.
Moro Ojomo, DT, PHI (🎓🎓🎓)
Another week, another featured Eagles interior defensive lineman. We knew Jordan Davis’ regression was coming, but no one could have reasonably expected a one-assist game in Week 3. Digging into what I got wrong with this previous streaming call, I saw a major jump in Moro Ojomo’s snap share (50% in Week 3 to 67% in Week 4), which coincided with a decline for Davis (from 68% to 54%).
Digging further into Ojomo’s game revealed that he is leading the Eagles’ struggling pass-rush with 15 pressures and two sacks behind a solid 72.6 pass rush grade. The Eagles have a tough matchup against arguably the best offensive line in the NFL: the Denver Broncos. That line not only grades well but also has stifled many interior defenders, allowing only one 10-20 point game and one 20+ point game thus far this season. Still, Bo Nix is among the top third of QBs generating their own pressures, so there will be opportunities in what should be a great game on Sunday afternoon.
Bud Dupree, DE, LAC (🎓🎓)
While Tuli is the Chargers’ defensive end to have this week (and rest of season and dynasty), teammate Bud Dupree is also a viable play this week. The eleventh-year player out of Kentucky has back-to-back six-sack campaigns to his credit across stints in Atlanta and LA, but he has been held sackless through four games.
His grades are unimpressive, but as teams shift focus to Tuli, Dupree’s 75% snap share bodes well for his opportunities to produce. That production may come this week as the Commanders have allowed 10+ point production from the “1B” pass rusher in three of four games early this season.
Byron Murphy II, DT, SEA (🎓🎓)
A DT that I absolutely love for dynasty, Byron Murphy II has a first-round draft pedigree but has spent his career in a very crowded D-line room. His snap shares seem to have stabilized in the 60-76% range through four games, and his ability as a pass rusher should continue to earn him these opportunities.
Murphy currently boasts the 16th highest pass rush grade among interior defensive linemen and is fifth in the position in pressures, and first in sacks. He is coming off his worst fantasy performance of the year, notching only two assists against the Cardinals, but his previous floor was a 7.5-point game in Week 1, and he is yet to be credited with a missed tackle this season.
Good luck, and if you have any questions about deep DL plays, my office is always open on Twitter (@ProfessorIDP).
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