NFL Secret Superstars, Week 17: Parker Washington now defines Jaguars’ red-hot passing game

Every team has those players whose performances outstrip their name recognition for whatever reason. Maybe the team itself is so unspectacular, that getting attention from the nation is a fool’s errand. Maybe it’s someone who was buried on the depth chart until the coaches could really see the potential. It could be that the player in question has been below average before, and it takes a second for people to catch up with the fact that the light really did come on. Or, perhaps someone was disregarded in the draft, and had to bull his way up the ladder against all odds.

Regardless, at SB Nation, we like to recognize these players in our weekly “Secret Superstars” series. Every week, we’ll feature four underrated players, using tape, metrics, and quotes from the players themselves, as well as their coaches and teammates, to shine a light on people who really deserve that illumination, and haven’t received enough of it in line with what they’re doing on the field.

For Week 17, our Secret Superstars are as follows; previous week’s honorees can be found below as well. Click the links to read the full profiles.

The Jacksonville Jaguars are 12-4, they’re currently the AFC’s three-seed, and quarterback Trevor Lawrence has never looked better under first-year head coach Liam Coen. This has been especially true over the last few games — since Week 13, Lawrence has completed 99 of 162 passes for 1,345 yards, 12 touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 109.7, which ranks third over that time behind only Brock Purdy of the San Francisco 49ers and Drake Maye of the New England Patriots.

What’s interesting about the Jags’ new and pronounced passing game is that the two guys who were expected to lead it as targets have been missing in action in different ways. Travis Hunter was just starting to get the hang of the Coen offense before he was lost for the rest of the season to a knee injury in late October. And Brian Thomas Jr., one of the most productive rookie receivers in 2024, hasn’t come close to his inaugural numbers in 2025.

The November 4 trade for Jakobi Myers has been a blessing, and the team pounced all over that with a three-year, $60 million contract extension in mid-December. Myers has been the team’s leading receiver since Week 10 — 37 catches on 53 targets for 439 yards and three touchdowns — but the guy who’s closing in on Myers is one Parker Washington, Jacksonville’s sixth-round pick out of Penn State in the 2023 draft. Washington was a blip on the radar at most in his first two NFL seasons, but the connection with Lawrence in Coen’s offense is now clear.

It’s been especially clear over the last two games, and what Washington did to the Denver Broncos’ top-ranked defense in Jacksonville’s 34-20 Week 16 win. Washington caught six passes on 10 targets for 145 yards and a touchdown. 90 of those yards came after the catch, and 77 came after first contact.

“It’s funny, you create these clusters of players at every position and, and obviously you have needs, and best on board, and there’s a lot of things that go into this,” [Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff] Ulbrich said after the Watts pick. “When I kept putting my safety cluster together, we were looking at this third to fourth round as kind of like the honey-hole for that. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even put Watts on it, because I had him as a second-round guy, and I thought he was going to be long gone. If we had had our second, he would have definitely been part of that conversation. The fact that we didn’t have that second anymore, I thought he was out of the conversation, and then he ends up being there.”

Watts was just as happy to be there, as he had patterned his overall game on Jessie Bates III, who would now be a teammate and mentor.

“I’m really excited to be teammates with him,” Watts said of Bates post-draft. “I just think we’re very similar. We’re similar in size. He gets the ball. He’s a playmaker. He can tackle well. So, I feel like we’re very similar in all aspects of the game of football.”

After the Falcons’ 27-24 win over the Los Angeles Rams on Monday night, we’re guessing that everybody is even happier that Watts lasted as long as he did in the draft. In that game, Watts picked off two of Matthew Stafford’s passes, and while he did allow two big-play receptions (weirdly enough, two 27-yard catches by fellow rookie Terence Ferguson, the Rams’ outstanding tight end from Oregon), if you kill as many drives as you help sustain, anybody will take that ratio.

There are those who will tell you that pass-rushers generally need a full season or more to adapt to the NFL and its better blockers and more advanced protection schemes. Only those in that aforementioned building could tell you why it’s taken as long as it has for the light to come on for Newton, but it most definitely did against Dallas in the Commanders’ 30-23 loss. Newton absolutely went off before a national television audience, with four sacks and six total pressures in 27 pass-rushing snaps. Basically, everybody in the middle or on the right side of the Cowboys’ offensive line was in for a very, very long day.

Whether he had his shoulders square or in a tilted alignment, one-tech or three-tech, in one-on-ones or against double teams, Newton was out for blood, and it showed up over and over on the tape. This was the Jer’Zhan Newton I thought I’d see in the NFL.

Quinn was asked about the difference now following the Cowboys game, and his response was both highly detailed and extremely interesting.

“I think the disruption, the quickness, so those are the skills that he has,” Quinn said when asked about his increased confidence in the second-year man. “And so, to hear him put all the pieces together, anticipation of plays, how to go execute it to go, I felt that. And some of that’s instinctual to go, ‘It’s pass, it’s a run, where can I go?‘ It does take some time to learn that. And when you do as a ballplayer, the game slows down because now you can anticipate a little better. I know the defensive call, I got that. Now how can I apply my skills into this call?

“What you don’t want, we had some of this early in the year, ‘I’ll go make a play, I’ll go overtry on one.’ And that’s part of instincts, knowing when and when not to. Much like a quarterback, ‘Can I fit this one in or can’t I?” on a tight throw. It’s no different at other positions. ‘Do I go take my shot to run through? Can I notice to pass, to hit a move?’ So, to see those instincts come through and it can slow down.

“You’re so ready to get going to go get another possession, and so to finish with under 45 plays, you don’t get enough cracks at that. And so, those are significant changes in it, double the amount of plays. And so, yeah, it does have an effect, not an effect of morale or that, just not enough cracks at bat. And so, I think it’s definitely a factor in the game but not in the emotional pull. It’s more if you’re on the offensive or defensive side that’s either converting, not converting, those are a bigger pull or factor, I think.”

And it wasn’t as if Pleasants looked like a Secret Superstar in 2024; he allowed four pressures in 67 overall snaps. Now, he was replacing the best left tackle of his era… in a must-win game… against a Bears defense without a truly dominant pass rusher, but a defense that can mess you up schematically with pressure if you’re not used to what you’re seeing.

No big deal, right?

At first, it looked as if it would be a big deal. With 9:41 left in the first half, Pleasants tried to get aggressive in his pass protection plan against Chicago edge-rusher Austin Booker, which allowed Booker to beat his man around the edge, and take Brock Purdy down with a show-off sack. Pleasants also allowed Booker to get around him for a hurry of Purdy with 11:33 left in the fourth quarter.

In 71 snaps (40 in pass pro), those were the only two quarterback disruptions Pleasants allowed.

So, okay. If Pleasants could negate edge-rushers around the arc at a dominant level, he wouldn’t have been having up update his Rolodex every other minute in his NFL journey. Beyond those two plays, he did more than enough to hold things up on his end, whether he had help to his side or not. The 6’7”, 330-pound Pleasants was a pleasant (sorry) surprise as a run-blocker, especially when it was time to seal the edge at the first and second levels. And as a pass protector, outside of the two gaffes we’ve already detailed, Pleasants did what a replacement-level offensive lineman should do — he made sure that nobody noticed him as much as humanly possible.

Willis replaced the injured Jordan Love in Week 1 of the 2024 season against the Philadelphia Eagles after Love suffered an MCL sprain, and completed 40 of 54 passes as the starter and backup that season. Willis was especially effective in his “revenge game” against the Titans in Week 3. Willis completed 13 of 19 passes for 201 yards, a touchdown, and a passer rating of 120.8, and he had several explosive throws on the day. Willis also showed off his athleticism with six runs for 73 yards and another score. In Green Bay’s 30-14 win, Willis looked every bit a starting-quality quarterback in Matt LaFleur’s offense.

Fast-forward to Green Bay’s Saturday night loss to the Chicago Bears (yeah, I know), when Willis replaced Love after Love suffered a concussion with 8:21 left in the second quarter. The Packers went with a heavy run plan for the rest of the second quarter, and then, with 12:12 left in the third quarter, Willis hit tight end Luke Musgrave for 26 yards on a crosser with receiver Christian Watson — his first of several pro throws on the day.

The coverage shifted post-snap, but Willis’ resolve to uncork a deep throw didn’t. Maybe Willis had a touchdown if he had hit Watson to the other side against Chicago’s busted Cover-2, but that’s another matter. When Willis identified safety Jaquan Brisker to the back side, he undoubtedly thought that Brisker was going to drop as the second deep safety, which Brisker didn’t until it was too late.

We’re talking about Shough here as the Saints’ possible future QB1 primarily because of two games against the Carolina Panthers — a 17-7 win in Week 10, and last Sunday’s 20-17 victory. In those two games, Shough completed 43 of 59 passes for 554 yards, three touchdowns, no picks, and a passer rating of 118.9. When you complete 24 of 32 for 272 yards, a touchdown, no picks, and a passer rating of 110.4 as Shough did on Sunday, that’ll perk people up in the building.

“It’s huge,” [receiver Chris] Olave said of Shough’s performance and development. “Having somebody back there who’s fearless. He took a great amount of hits today, kept bouncing back in, and getting back up, so that shows a lot as a leader, and it is great for the team. We’ve got to keep up the momentum and keep winning.”

Veteran edge-rusher Cam Jordan, who has been through all of the team’s quarterback perambulations in the post-Drew Brees era, was positively rhapsodic postgame regarding Shough’s potential.

”You go look at his tape and there is a reason why he led Louisville to where he did,” Jordan said. “There is a reason why when he got his turn, he has shown his ability. He had time to develop. You don’t just create a diamond. A diamond is out of pressure, hard work, effort. It’s stuck in the earth. It’s got to be compacted into what it is. It starts off as dirt or coal, whatever. It’s got to get turned into a diamond. Hopefully, it’s going to be a diamond. He is being molded. He’s developing. In a few games, you have seen how much growth he has shown. That is potential. Let’s go capture it each and every game. Let’s leave nothing unturned. Guys are playing with so much heart. It just hasn’t turned our way a lot. Now you see that we are winning. All of a sudden, we are winning these close games. That builds confidence.

“I wish there were another 13 games in the season.”

When Mike Tomlin and Aaron Rodgers talk about the Steelers’ success this season, both of them will bring up the “castoffs” — the players on the roster who were easily bought and brought because they were lightly regarded elsewhere. It’s become a big thing in the building.

“There are some castoffs if you look at our roster, which makes it really special,” Rodgers said after Pittsburgh’s 28-15 Monday night win over the Miami Dolphins, which put them at 8-6 on the season. “Kenny Gainwell signed a next-to-nothing contract. Connor Heyward, afterthought. Had a touchdown run. You know, Marquez [Valdes-Scantling] been on a couple of teams. Adam Thielen got cut. [Asante] Samuel was on the street for a long time. Says a lot about the character of the guys we brought in.”

Rodgers brought up running back Kenneth Gainwell, who has become a big deal for his new team. Selected in the fifth round of the 2021 draft by the Philadelphia Eagles out of Memphis, Gainwell was a part of an Eagles organization that made two Super Bowls and won one, but when his contract ran out following the 2024 season, he was not brought back. Instead, on March 13, the Steelers signed him to a one-year, $1,79 million contract with $620,000 guaranteed, which is as close to vet minimum as you can get. Gainwell was signed as a reserve running back and return specialist, and after never gaining more than 862 all-purpose yards in a season for his first NFL team, Gainwell is already up to 1,312 for the Steelers with three regular-season games to go — 451 as a runner, 332 as a receiver, and 529 as a return specialist.

“Absolutely.” Tomlin said on Tuesday when he was asked if he saw Gainwell a higher-volume player in Pittsburgh than he was in Philadelphia. “You know, Saquon [Barkley] casts a pretty large shadow. We played that football team, and Kenny made some significant plays in that game against us converting third downs that produced scoring drives. I think he converted three third downs that transferred to 17 points in the midst of that game. He also covered kicks in that game. He returns kicks. So what we saw was a guy that was a football player first that had a nice skillset to do a lot of things, and had some upside because of the ridiculous shadow that Saquon casts. I don’t know that either of us is surprised by what he’s doing or what he’s capable of. We saw it first-hand in-stadium as an opponent.”

Tomlin was referring to Pittsburgh’s 27-13 Week 15 loss to the Eagles last season, in which Gainwell ran the ball seven times for 20 yards, caught three passes for 40 yards, and returned two kicks for 63 yards.

When it comes to pass-rushers, sacks set the pace regarding public awareness, but they don’t tell the whole story. Just as you would be selling defensive backs short if you only went by their interception totals as opposed to all other available metrics and tape, evaluating defensive linemen by their sack totals alone will never paint the entire picture — especially in today’s NFL, where blitz and stunt packages are designed to cause as much havoc as possible in an overall sense. Total pressures are valued because when you disrupt the quarterback, the quarterback’s performance is generally negatively affected. Simple logic, right?

And when it comes to creating havoc for enemy quarterbacks, there’s no defensive lineman — especially no interior defensive lineman — who has matched Zach Allen of the Denver Broncos this season. Allen is well-known in NFL circles as a transcendent player, and the four-year, $102 million contract extension with $44,25 million guaranteed he got in the 2025 offseason tells you what the Broncos already thought of him, but when it comes to recogniti0n verses performance, Allen still doesn’t get what he deserves… and he may be playing better than ever at age 28.

In the Broncos’ 34-26 win over the Green Bay Packers, Allen had half a sack, but he also had six quarterback hits and six quarterback hurries, and it could be said that with all the other stuff Jordan Love and Green Bay’s offense had to deal with when it came to Denver’s diabolical pass rush, what Allen did to affect Love, and the negative plays that resulted, made the difference in the Broncos’ 11th straight win.

Is it a coincidence that Van Lanen’s games at left tackle have aligned with a three-game stretch in which Trevor Lawrence has completed 53 of 89 passes for nine touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 123.0? Well, given that Little had allowed nine sacks and 29 total pressures in 472 pass-blocking reps, and Van Lanen has allowed no sacks and three total pressures in 161 pass-blocking reps at left tackle, it probably helps.

Left guard Ezra Cleveland, who has obviously lined up right next to Van Lanen on those left tackle snaps, talked on Monday about his teammate’s rare versatility.

“Yeah, I’ve never done it personally and I don’t think a lot of O-linemen have actually done it,” Cleveland said. “But to play at the level he’s playing at, what is it, four different positions now? Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s unheard of. [OL] Pat Mekari has a little bit of experience doing that too, so he could answer it a little better. But besides those two, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone do that. So, it’s really cool that he’s doing it, and it’s fun to be to be a part of it, and play next to him, and see what he’s doing to prepare in the offensive line room, and be a part of it.”

The Shedeur Sanders we’re talking about as a Secret Superstar is the one we saw last Sunday against the Tennessee Titans. Despite the 31-29 loss (and we will not litigate Kevin Stefanski taking Sanders off the field for that final two-point conversion attempt here, because that’s its own disaster), Sanders was, in many ways, a different quarterback. He completed 23 of 42 passes for 364 yards, three touchdowns, one interception, a passer rating of 97.7, and three rushing attempts for 29 yards and another touchdown. That Sanders was the Browns’ leading rusher on the day is one of many reasons Cleveland lost this game, but let’s focus on what Sanders did both well and differently this time around.

Yes, it’s easy to bag on a Titans defense that now ranks 28th in DVOA, but the 49ers and the Raiders are also in the NFL’s bottom half in that regard, so take it for what it is. Per Next Gen Stats, Sanders became just the second rookie quarterback since at least 1970 to record 350+ passing yards, 3+ passing touchdowns and 1+ rushing touchdown in a single game, joining Joe Burrow (Week 7, 2020 vs. the Browns, of course). On the other end of the equation, Sanders now also holds the distinction of being the only quarterback in 2025 to lose a game in which he had 350+ passing yards, 4+ total touchdowns, and fewer than two interceptions.

Where the different Shedeur showed up more than in any other way was his response to pressure. Sanders was pressured on 30 of his 47 dropbacks, an insane 63.8% rate, and he completed 11 of 26 passes when disrupted for 187 yards, one touchdown, one interception, and a passer rating of 64.1. Sanders took just two sacks, and the tape tells you that this was primarily the result of his newfound ability to get the ball out when things were falling apart.

If you’ve ever seen a band, read a book, or watched a movie before it got really big and the entire world got hold of it, you know that there’s a duality to the feeling. You’re happy that some gifted people are getting the attention they deserve even as you’re a bit bummed that it isn’t “your” band, book, or movie anymore… even though it still is.

It can be that way with draft prospects if you’re in the business of evaluating them. Once in a while, you’ll hit on a guy because he’s a physical freak, he has outstanding game acumen, he’s in the perfect system for his skills, or some unholy combination of all three. I’ve had my share of hits and misses in the *cough* number of years I’ve been doing this, but when the Seattle Seahawks selected South Carolina defensive back/game-wrecker Nick Emmanwori with the 35th overall pick in the second round of the 2025 draft, it was beyond clear that in head coach Mike Macdonald’s defense, Emmanwori could be weaponized as few rookies in this class could be, and right away.

Emmanwori has become more and more of a royal pain in the ass for opposing offenses, and this phenomenon amplified itself in Seattle’s 37-9 win over the Atlanta Falcons last Sunday. The rookie had a sack, five solo tackles, three stops, two tackles for loss, an interception, and a blocked field goal for good measure. The last NFL player to rack up a sack, an interception, and a blocked field goal in the same game was Adrian Wilson of the Arizona Cardinals on September 12, 2010, against what was then the St. Louis Rams. At 6’3, 230, Wilson was another one of those bigger, do-it-all safeties who could demean an offense from just about everywhere.

There are two things you might not expect about the 2025 Miami Dolphins. First, they’re almost playoff-relevant at 6-7 after a brutal 2-7 start, and second, they’ve become one of the NFL’s best rushing offenses. Maybe that’s less of a surprise if you factor in Mike McDaniel’s history as Kyle Shanahan’s run game coordinator in San Francisco from 2017-2020, but this Dolphins offense really leads with the run right now. Through Week 14, they’ve run the ball on 45.3% of their plays, which ranks 14th, but they rank eighth in rushing yards per game (126.5), third in rushing yards per play (4.9, tied with the Chicago Bears and the Washington Commanders), fourth in run plays of 10 or more yards (47), and first in yards after contact per attempt (3.86).

Another surprise, which is more than tangentially tied to all that rushing success, is the efforts of center Aaron Brewer, because this guy has become the embodiment of the whole Secret Superstar thing. The Dolphins slipped under the national radar with their unfortunate start to the season (except for the inevitable “Will Mike McDaniel be fired in-season?” stuff), but Brewer, the 2020 undrafted free agent from Texas State (Go, Bobcats!), has become one of the game’s best at his position, and quite possibly the best move center the NFL has seen since Jason Kelce’s salad days.

The Bills’ defense is different, too. Back in 2020, Sean McDermott and his staff ran as much nickel defense with five defensive backs on the field as anyone; now they’re calling far more dime defenses with six defensive backs, and the blitz rate has gone way down — from 35.8% in 2020 to 20.1% in 2025.

What else has gone way down is the effectiveness of that defense. In 2020, the Bills ranked 11th in Defensive DVOA; they shot up to first overall in 2021, second in 2022, 12th in 2023, 11th in 2024, and 22nd through Week 14 of the 2025 season. The decline has come for all the usual reasons — age, injuries, evaluation shortfalls — but if the Bills are to finally reach their dream of a Super Bowl appearance in the Josh Allen era, somebody is going to have to step the hell up and do something about the slide.

Over the last two weeks, that someone has been cornerback Christian Benford, the 2022 sixth-round pick out of Villanova who has earned his place over time as the team’s best player at his position. Like everyone else on this defense in 2025, Benford has had his rough days, especially early in the season when he was dealing with a groin injury. In Weeks 1-5, Benford allowed 17 catches on 24 targets for 182 yards, four touchdowns, no interceptions, no pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 132.3.

Things have become MUCH better. Since Week 6, Benford has been a completely different player, allowing nine catches on 19 targets for 121 yards, no touchdowns, no pass breakups, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 28.5. That is by far the NFL’s lowest passer rating allowed since Week 6 among any cornerback playing at least 50% of his team’s snaps — Jamel Dean of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers ranks second at 39.4.

In the 2024 preseason, the Green Bay Packers did everything they possibly could to erase the odor of a defense run by Joe Barry that had ranked 27th in DVOA on that side of the ball the season before. New defensive coordinator Jeff Hafley came on board from Boston College, and boy, did general manager Brian Gutekunst and his staff attack the safety positions. Former New York Giant Xavier McKinney was signed to a four-year, $67 million contract with $23 million guaranteed, and in the 2024 draft, the Packers selected three potential starting safeties — Georgia’s Javon Bullard in the second round, Oregon’s Evan Williams in the fourth, and Oregon State’s Kitan Oladapo in the fifth.

McKinney has been a force multiplier as expected, and the guy from that draft class who is really starting to show out is Evan Williams. During his time in 2023 with the Ducks, and with Fresno State from 2019-2022, Williams proved to be the very model of the multi-position defender, which Hafley loves, and it’s been working very well as Williams’ NFL career progresses. Williams got decent play in his rookie season for a Packers defense that rose to seventh in Defensive DVOA, allowing 15 catches on 26 targets for 168 yards, 76 yards after the catch, three touchdowns, one interceptions, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 99.5.

Williams has been better in coverage this season for a Green Bay defense that has been up and down this season. The ways in which Hafley is deploying Williams is highly interesting these days — especially in the team’s 31-24 Thanksgiving Day win over the Detroit Lions. In the win that took the Pack to 8-3-1 on the season, Hafley was all about making Williams the bomber from all over the field in the run game. Jahmyr Gibbs is as dangerous and explosive as any back in the NFL, but when Williams was coming down at high speed and with bad intentions, Gibbs could do absolutely nothing.

What did the Bengals do differently in their 32-14 win, in which they pressured Lamar Jackson at a 39.5% rate, and forced five turnovers that flipped the win probability to a 48.2% degree? Golden sent extra rushers on 10 of Jackson’s 38 dropbacks, a 26.32% blitz rate that does jibe with how the Bengals have been doing things of late. In Weeks 1-7, Golden called blitzes on 33 of 259 opponent dropbacks, a 12.7% rate that was obviously among the league’s lowest. Since Week 8, though, the Bengals have nearly doubled their blitz rate — 48 on 192 opponent dropbacks, which is a cool 25% blitz rate.

Is it a coincidence that Golden has been far more aggressive since losing Hendrickson? Probably not, and those blitzes haven’t always worked out. But as he is more confident with his cornerbacks, giving said cornerbacks no safety help has been a more practical option — certainly against the Ravens.

From the pass-rush angle, the guy who has really stepped up is Joseph Ossai, the fifth-year third-round pick from Texas. The Bengals re-signed Ossai to a one-year, $6.5 million contract with $3 million guaranteed this offseason, and that was a very good move — especially with Hendrickson’s injuries this season, and the fact that he probably won’t be back in 2026 after all the contractual stuff.

Ossai has already matched his single-season high with five sacks, and his 37 total pressures this season is a career best. Since Hendrickson has been out, he’s totaled three of those sacks and 19 of those pressures, and he’s getting to the quarterback with and without blitzes.

Perhaps the most obvious and dominant Ben Johnson statement to date regarding the importance and efficiency of the right run game came in Chicago’s 24-15 Black Friday win over the Philadelphia Eagles. In that game, the Bears had 42 designed carries, and they gained 246 yards with 91 yards before contact and 177 yards after contact — both of which were season highs. The Bears had done something similar to the Cincinnati Bengals in a 47-42 Week 9 win, and in that game, it wasn’t the combination of veteran back D’Andre Swift and rookie Kyle Monangai; it was Monangai who did it all, as Swift was out with a hip injury.

This time around, it was the duo that did it, and they did it at an historic level. Monangai and Swift became the first twosome of Bears running backs to each gain more than 100 yards in a game since Walter Payton and Matt Suhey did it on November 10, 1985. Monangai also scored a rushing touchdown in his fourth straight game, becoming the third Bears rookie to do so in the Super Bowl era, joining Payton in 1975 and Jeremy Langford in 2015.

Not bad for the Rutgers alum, who was selected with the 235th overall pick in the seventh round of the 2025 draft. At 5’9 and 205 pounds, Monangai was undervalued due to his size, and the fact that he wasn’t regarded as a breakaway speed guy. But there were some out there (ahem) who thought more of Monangai based on the college tape.

While he’s been a standout through most of the season, Lawrence saved a few of his most remarkable plays for Seattle’s 26-0 thrashing of the Minnesota Vikings last Sunday. It was Seattle’s first shutout since 2015, and the first time the Vikings had been blanked since 2007. From the start, Lawrence was inclined to unleash hell on Minnesota’s offense, led as it was by undrafted rookie quarterback Max Brosmer.

The veteran announced his presence with authority pretty early in this one. With 3:14 left in the first half, Minnesota had the ball at the Seattle 4-yard line on fourth-and-1. Lawrence crashed through the Vikings’ protections (which didn’t account for him at all), chased Brosmer back a good 20 yards, and Brosmer did what no quarterback should do — make a throwing attempt when he’s dead to rights on the ground. The result was linebacker Ernest Jones’ 85-yard pick-six, but it was Lawrence who set it up.

If you weren’t already up on how great the Houston Texans’ defense is (and since you’re reading this on a Houston Texans website, I dare say you are), Thursday night’s 23-19 win over the Buffalo Bills sure put this defense on the national radar. The Texans rank third in Defensive DVOA behind only the Seattle Seahawks and the Los Angeles Rams (another upstart defense worthy of your attention), and their 16.5 points per game allowed is the NFL’s best.

Josh Allen was sacked eight times in that game, the most in his NFL career, and he was pressured on more than 20 of his dropbacks. The Texans took Allen to the ground on 53.3% of his pressured dropbacks, and both edge-rushers — Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr. — were lining up to the buffet over and over.

But when head coach DeMeco Ryans was asked postgame about his favorite part of the defensive performance in the game, he pointed immediately to the work done by second-year safety Calen Bullock. Bullock was targeted twice against the Bills, and he responded brilliantly. The only catches he allowed were the ones he made — Bullock gave up no catches, but he had two interceptions, and his second pick with 24 seconds left sealed the deal.

“The thing that stood out to me… The way our defensive line hunted, of course that was great, but Calen Bullock is the guy for me,” Ryans said. “The way he went out and intercepted the ball two times, and forced a fumble to get us in plus territory there. My favorite play is the one that ended it. A lot of emotions going on on the sideline through that entire drive. For Calen to come down with the interception, that was my favorite play, because it meant it was over.”

There is no doubt that Josh Jacobs is the Green Bay Packers’ premier running back. This season when healthy, Jacobs has run the ball 169 times for 648 yards, 11 touchdowns, 32 forced missed tackles, and seven runs of 15 or more yards. Jacobs has also caught 28 passes on 34 targets for 237 yards. It’s why the Packers’ offensive EPA per play drops from +0.217 when Jacobs is on the field, as opposed to -0.012 when he is not. Green Bay’s Success Rate goes from 51.2% to 41.8% when Jacobs isn’t there, the yards per play drop from 5.89 to 5.09, and the first down rate drops from 33.2% to 29.1%.

Here’s the problem — due to ankle, calf, and knee injuries, Jacobs has been off the field on 282 of the Packers’ 671 plays this season. Jacobs has run the ball more than 20 times in just three games in 2025, and this means that the Packers need other options in the backfield.

On Sunday, in Green Bay’s 23-6 win over the Minnesota Vikings that took the team’s record to 7-3-1 on the season, the alternate back announced his presence with extreme authority. Emanuel Wilson, the 2023 undrafted free agent out of Fort Valley State who was originally signed by the Denver Broncos on May 12, 2023, waived three days later, and signed by the Packers a week later, made the final 53 and never looked back.

Pratt played a grand total of four games for the Raiders, and while he wasn’t exactly the next Ray Lewis, he seemed to be transitioning well to his second NFL home. Then, in Week 5 when the Raiders traveled to Indianapolis to meet the Colts, Pratt didn’t go with the team (who lost 40-6 to the Colts), and said team released him the day after that October 5 game.

[Raiders head coach Pete] Carroll simply said that the team decided to go in a different direction. [Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick] Graham seemed a little less sure.

“[We] love having good players around, and is what it is when we make decisions,” Graham said on October 9. “The linebacker position, it’s going to take all 11 out there. We’ll see who’s out there playing and things of that nature, but it’s going to take a good effort to replace a good player like that.”

Well, that would not be the first or the last seemingly impulsive decision the Raiders have made this season. Regardless, though Pratt didn’t travel to Indy to get his block knocked off along with the rest of the team, he was soon on a flight to that fine city. New Colts defensive coordinator Lou Anarumo held that spot with the Bengals from 2019-2024, and since the Bengals took Pratt in the third round of the 2019 draft out of North Carolina State, there was an obvious familiarity. The Colts signed Pratt to a one-year, $1,846,154 contract, and set him loose in their defense.

“I think it’s huge,” Anarumo said on November 18 of Pratt’s addition. “Getting back into the swing of things with us. And he’s done a great job communicating to the group and playing well next to Zaire [Franklin]. And [I] think those guys have really done a good job inside and complementing each other very well.”

Five seasons into the Trevor Lawrence Experience, it’s tough to tell exactly what the Jacksonville Jaguars’ passing game is. It exists in a conventional sense, of course, but it’s not always easy to determine… well, to what end? In Jacksonville’s 27-24 win over the Arizona Cardinals last Sunday, a victory that pushed the team to 7-4 on the season, Lawrence completed 18 of 30 passes for 256 yards, three touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 81.4. That high volatility rate is one of the things that has been a Lawrence issue all along — he’ll make some amazing throws, then some real head-scratchers, and a whole lot of “meh” in the middle.

First-year head coach Liam Coen, fresh off his work with Baker Mayfield in Tampa, and with a pretty decent history with Sean McVay before that, was supposed to be the fixer, but Lawrence seems to be in a lot of the same places he was before. Not that it can’t work over time, but we are where we are with this.

One player who has seen an uptick in productivity in the passing game is tight end Brenton Strange. The 2023 second-round pick from Penn State saw limited productivity in his rookie season, caught 40 passes on 54 targets for 411 yards and two touchdowns in 2024, and has worked through a quadriceps injury he suffered in Week 5 against the Kansas City Chiefs. That put him on injured reserve, and he wasn’t able to return to play until last Sunday’s Cardinals game.

But what a return it was. Strange caught five passes on five targets for 93 yards, and he was beating up Arizona’s defense on corner routes to either side of the field, as well as simple sit and drag routes from which he could manufacture yards after the catch. Given the number of receivers who have struggled for whatever reasons in Coen’s offense this season, Strange’s breakout performance was a welcome relief.

One of the primary reasons that the Chicago Bears are 7-3, atop the NFC North, and have the NFC’s No. 3 seed right now — in very good shape for their first postseason appearance since the 2020 season — is that Dennis Allen has turned the defense into a turnover machine. The Bears are quite comfortably the NFL’s best team when it comes to turnover ratio at +16; the Los Angeles Rams rank second at +10. And no other team can match Chicago’s interception total of 15; the Jacksonville Jaguars are second with 13.

Unsurprisingly, three of the league’s four top interceptors play for this new Monsters of the Midway — safety Kevin Byard leads the NFL with five picks, cornerback Nahshon Wright has four, and linebacker Tremaine Edmunds also has four. And in the Bears’ 19-17 Sunday win over the Minnesota Vikings, both Byard and Wright stole passes from Minnesota quarterback J.J. McCarthy.

In Wright’s case, he was playing for something more than just a win. Not only was he facing the team that had released him back in April, but Wright also had a heavy heart because John Beam, his head coach at Laney College in Oakland, California in 2018 before Wright transferred to Oregon State, was shot on November 13 at the Laney campus. Beam died the following day. Wright and Beam had talked two days before Beam died, and he found out about Beam’s death o Friday from a fellow coach.

“He was watching over me,” Wright said after the Vikings game. “It’s crazy. He called me the night before he passed and he told me that every game he watched, I just seemed to get a pick. So I just know he was behind me today.”

McMillian’s sacks came on plays in which he was a late blitzer, and the Chiefs had already accounted their protections to the guys they could see. On the first sack, right tackle Jawaan Taylor and right guard Trey Smith had committed to double edge-rusher Nik Bonitto, which is generally a smart thing to do. But that also game McMillian free access to Mahomes. The second sack came on a six-man rush look in which linebacker Dre Greenlaw dropped into coverage, running back Kareem Hunt plowed into the middle to counter what looked like a double A-gap blitz, and left tackle Josh Simmons was busy dealing with Mr. Bonitto. Ergo, another free rush where McMillian damn near took Mahomes’ head off.

“It’s kind of a timing thing, you know,” McMillian said of the sacks. “You try and hold it as long as possible. Some of the quarterbacks, they’re looking at the nickel because the nickel shows what the defense is in a lot every time. I just try and hold it as long as possible, and you try and find keys to when the ball is snapped—I noticed early in the game when he was snapping the ball, his hands were coming up and the ball was coming out. So I just timed it so when his hands start coming up, I start sneaking toward the edge and made a play. They didn’t slide a protection. I just went in.”

As to the play in which Mahomes almost went headless, there was a design behind that.

“I just [saw] him winding up, and that’s kind of why I jumped. I jumped in the air. I didn’t want him to throw the ball, so I was going to bat it down or either get the sack. One of those, but he wasn’t going to get the ball off.”

That second sack with 3:53 left in the fourth quarter basically sealed the game for the Broncos.

We have now entered the Aubrey Pleasant portion of our program.

The Los Angeles Rams’ Assistant Head Coach and Passing Game Coordinator, Pleasant is in his seventh season with the team, and especially lately, he’s done a marvelous job of developing every defensive back that comes into the team’s facility — whether it’s via the draft or other means. Last week, cornerback Emmanuel Forbes Jr., the former first-round washout with the Washington Commanders who was claimed off waivers last December, made Secret Superstars after a series of games in which he was as lockdown as anybody playing his position in the NFL. In the Rams’ 21-19 win over the Seattle Seahawks last Sunday, Forbes followed that up by shutting down Jaxson Smith-Njigba, the league’s most prolific receiver.

It seems like a different Rams defensive back makes the show every week, and in the Seahawks game, it was safety Kamren Kinchens, the second-year man from Miami who the Rams took in the third round of the 2024 draft. The 6’0, 205-pound Kinchens picked off two of Sam Darnold’s four interceptions, and he was a big part of the confusing coverage switches that had Darnold wondering just what the hell was going on out there.

It was the second time in Kinchens’ young career that he had two interceptions against the Seahawks in a game; he did the same in Week 9 of the 2024 season in a 26-20 win that included a 102-yard interception return by Guess Who.

Somebody had to be the primary beneficiary of Brissett’s voluminous completions, and that was third-year receiver Michael Wilson from Stanford. Coming into this game, Wilson had caught 22 passes on 37 targets for 231 yards and a touchdown, so few expected his stat line of 15 catches on 18 targets for 185 yards. That was not on anybody’s bingo card.

To his credit, though, Brissett called it to a point in the week leading up to the game.

“I think Mike is just tough,” Brissett said last Wednesday. “He does everything for us. He blocks; he clears people out. He does all of the grimy stuff, and then when you sit back and you watch him, you’re like, man, it’s his turn to get the ball. His speed and power when he runs. He creates separation. He has strong hands. He’s a guy that’s going to step up and make a lot of plays this week, and I’m excited for him and the opportunity. He’s just one of those guys where you want to see him succeed.”

Well, Brissett did his level best, and Wilson responded with a game that showed all of his positive traits. Wilson caught 10 of 10 targets on passes of 0-9 air yards, two of four targets on passes of 10-19 air yards, and three passes on four targets on passes of 20 or more air yards. Those explosive completions confirmed Brissett’s analysis regarding Wilson’s ability to create separation with speed and power while running through coverage.

Forbes bided his time, hoping that the 2025 season would provide different results.

At first, it was a rough go. From Weeks 1-5, he allowed 12 catches on 14 targets for 190 yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, two pass breakups, and the highest possible opponent passer rating of 158.3. The “bust” label was circulating, but the Rams thought that Assistant Head Coach/Pass Game Coordinator Aubrey Pleasant could teach Forbes what he needed to know.

Recently and finally, it’s kicked in. In Weeks 6-8, Forbes allowed two catches on four targets for 12 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, no pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 56.3. Then, in the Rams’ last two games — extremely decisive wins over the New Orleans Saints and the San Francisco 49ers — Forbes had his breakout performances. In those two games, he gave up five catches on 12 targets for 76 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, two pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 23.6.

Now, the guy who couldn’t hang with NFL receivers at the catch point was establishing his physical dominance in those moments.

Ingram, who the Minnesota Vikings selected with the 59th overall pick in the second round of the 2022 draft out of LSU, was thought to be a flyer at best in all these moves… and for good reason. It never clicked with Ingram in his first NFL home. He allowed 11 sacks and 63 total pressures in his rookie season (bad numbers for a tackle; HORRIBLE numbers for a guard), and followed that up with five sacks and 42 total pressures allowed in 2023, and five sacks and 24 total pressures allowed in 2024. Ingram’s pressure numbers might have been worse in 2024 but for the fact that he was benched in Week 11 in favor of Dalton Risner, and he never played another snap for the Vikings from then on.

Basically, Ingram was a mess, and nobody expected him to get a ton better in such an undefined offensive line in Houston. But that’s somehow what’s happened.

This season, in 299 pass-blocking reps, Ingram has allowed one sack, two quarterback hits, and seven quarterback hurries. The sack he allowed came in his first game with the Texans against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when he got waylaid in his assignment on a blitz; he hasn’t allowed a quarterback hit since the two he gave up against the Tennessee Titans in Week 4, and he pitched complete pressure shutouts against the Baltimore Ravens in Week 5, and against the San Francisco 49ers in Week 8.

Quite a turnaround, and the Texans can now brag a bit and say that they saw it coming.

At every position in football, there are players who bring talent riches to their teams that can’t really be replicated. For the Baltimore Ravens, there’s defensive back Kyle Hamilton, whose versatility allows him to change the structure and effectiveness of his defense simply by where he is deployed. Last season, the Ravens were sucking wind on defense until they made Hamilton a deep-third defender, and everything turned around. And in 2025, all it took was moving Hamilton back to the box and the slot (along with a really smart trade for Los Angeles Chargers for safety Alohi Gilman) for another Ravens defensive Renaissance.

Expecting to get your own Kyle Hamilton in the draft is generally a fool’s errand — there simply aren’t many humans who can do all the things Hamilton can do at his size — 6’4” and 220 pounds. But when the Seattle Seahawks took South Carolina defensive back Nick Emmanwori with the 35th pick in the second round of the 2025 draft, you could see what head coach Mike Macdonald was thinking. Macdonald, of course, was Baltimore’s defensive coordinator in 2022 and 2023 as Hamilton started to become the unicorn he is. So, he knows the prototype. Emmanwori showed up at the scouting combine at 6’3 and 227 pounds, and the spider chart he put up put any questions about his raw athleticism to rest.

Through his first few games, Emmanwori showed his versatility with eight quarterback pressures, 17 solo tackles, 10 stops, and 18 catches allowed on 24 targets for 130 yards, no touchdowns, no interceptions, two pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 95.8. Then, in Seattle’s 44-22 Week 10 beatdown of the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday, Emmanwori was unleashed as a pass defender to an entirely different level. On nine targets, he allowed four catches for 71 yards, four pass breakups, a half-sack, and an opponent passer rating of 72.0. Seeing a guy Emmanwori’s size clamp down in man and match concepts certainly had Macdonald feeling good about things.

It’s never easy to be part of a team that has clearly punted the present for a better future. Though the New York Jets really didn’t have a choice but to pursue that necessary evil. The trades of Sauce Gardner to the Indianapolis Colts, and Quinnen Williams to the Dallas Cowboys, said to the world that the Jets were not happy with their current structure, and the massive influx of draft picks they got in return does set general manager Darren Mougey up very well to re-fortify. Two first-round picks in 2026 and three first-round picks in 2027? That’s a pretty nice haul.

That still left the remaining Jets wondering what would happen in the rest of a lame-duck season in which their 1-7 record didn’t provide a ton of encouragement. It was good to see so many players step up in Sunday’s 27-20 win over the Cleveland Browns, especially players on the defensive side of the ball that had just been ransacked with those trades. Linebacker Quincy Williams, who could have gone in the tank after his brother was traded and he was benched, responded to all that with his best game of the season. Defensive tackle Jowon Briggs flashed with six quarterback disruptions in just 16 pass-rushing snaps. Cornerback Azareye’h Thomas and safety Tony Adams had good coverage reps.

But the guy who made the biggest “we’re still here” statement of all was edge-rusher Will McDonald IV, with his four sacks and seven total pressures. McDonald, who was one of my favorite players in his draft class — I was just hoping that his NFL team would put him in the right place as he wasn’t at Iowa State — was selected 15th overall in the 2023 draft. While he’s had his moments through his career, there’s been nothing like the post-purge explosion he had against Browns blockers who had no idea what to do with him.

Those blockers had no idea what to do with McDonald because McDonald threw just about every possible technique at them, at very high levels.

Tuesday marked one of the most impactful trade deadlines in recent NFL history, and perhaps one of the most impactful in the long run. But the trade that benefited both teams right off the bat in unexpected ways happened very much under the radar nearly a month ago. On October 7, the Chargers traded defensive back Alohi Gilman to the Baltimore Ravens for edge-rusher Odafe Oweh — the rare Double-Harbaugh Swap — and both players have excelled in their new homes.

While Gilman has patrolled the deep third in Baltimore’s defense, allowing Kyle Hamilton to be a game-changing box player, Oweh, the Ravens’ first-round pick in 2021, may be playing the best ball of his career. That’s something to say for a guy who had 11 sacks and 55 total pressures in 2024, but what Oweh has done since hitting the Los Angeles area is quite something.

Since Week 6, Oweh’s four sacks ties him with multiple players for third-best in the league, and his 12 pressures on just 77 pass-rushing snaps is top 10, as well. While the great and hugely underrated Tuli Tuipulotu leads the team with seven sacks and 45 total pressures this season, Oweh has become the force multiplier this defense needed. With Tuipulotu, Khalil Mack, and Oweh at his disposal, defensive coordinator Jesse Minter can dial up some really interesting pressure concepts.

At the time of the trade, Jim Harbaugh made quite the comparison when it came to Oweh.

“To me, he’s a lot like Khalil Mack,” Harbaugh said. “Direct rusher, has speed, has dip, has ability to set the edge. Been a very good, productive player, young player right in the prime of his career. Those things and others.”

Through Week 6, the 2025 Ravens’ defense was one of the NFL’s worst, and given all the injuries, it didn’t look as if any relief was on the horizon. That Ravens defense allowed an opponent passer rating of 108.6, fifth-worst in the NFL, and allowed 14 touchdowns to just one interception. Those Ravens allowed an NFL-worst 32.3 points per game, and the EPA per play allowed overall was… not great — +0.145, third-worst in the league.

Gilman did play in Week 6 for the Ravens, who suffered a frustrating 17-3 loss to a Rams team that thought it perfectly acceptable to debut Sean McVay’s new fascination with 13 personnel to great effect.

Basically, the Ravens’ defense scared nobody. But since Week 6 and the bye that followed, things have gotten a lot better. Over their last two games — wins over the Chicago Bears and the Miami Dolphins — these new Ravens have allowed 11 points per game, second-best in the NFL, and their EPA per play allowed of -0.086 is the NFL’s 10th-best.

How Gilman has affected the defense in a positive sense is as much about what he allows Kyle Hamilton to do as whatever Gilman does on the field. Last season, the Ravens saved their defense in the second half of the season by switching Hamilton from his usual do-it-all thing to more of a deep safety. This season, it’s been the exact opposite. With Gilman and Malaki Starks patrolling the deep third, Hamilton has been far more of a box player. Hamilton has lined up in the box more than 50% of the time over the last three games, and that’s the first time he’s done so that much in his career.

It also helps that Gilman and Hamilton played together at Notre Dame for a time.

Through the first eight weeks of the 2025 season, Jared Goff of the Detroit Lions was the one quarterback you did NOT want to blitz under any circumstances, because Goff was going to kill you with that stuff. Goff had been blitzed on 25% of his dropbacks in that time period, and he completed 37 of 50 passes (74.0%) for 507 yards (10.1 yards per attempt) four touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 132.7. Goff’s EPA per play jumped from +0.291 to +0.657 when blitzed, and that’s what Brian Flores and the Minnesota Vikings had to deal with last Sunday.

Some coaches would coach scared against such a quarterback. Of course, Flores did the exact opposite. Only the Atlanta Falcons (40.9%) have a higher blitz rate this season than the Vikings’ 40.6%, and no defense has a higher pressure rate than Minnesota’s 30.7%, so Flores was going to ride or die with what he does.

And it worked. The Vikings blitzed Goff on 14 of his 42 dropbacks, and Goff completed eight of 13 passes (61.5% against the blitz) for 74 yards (5.7 yards per attempt), no touchdowns, no interceptions, his first sack against a blitz all season, a passer rating of 90.3, and a negative EPA per play of -0.074.

How did Goff’s fortunes change so quickly? Flores sent linebackers Blake Cashman and Eric Wilson up the A-gaps incessantly — it was like Mike Zimmer was back in the building! — and Wilson feasted on those concepts. Overall against the Lions, Wilson had two sacks and six total pressures, and what he did up the middle in those mug looks was the key.

The Chiefs decided to target Bishop more in a game than he’d ever been targeted in his NFL career, and they really regretted it at the conclusion. On seven targets, Bishop allowed two receptions for 18 yards, seven yards after the catch, no touchdowns, four pass breakups, a couple of near-interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 39.6.

If you want to know why Mahomes completed just 15 of 34 passes for 250 yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and the third-worst passer rating of his career (57.2), you can start there.

Bishop’s deflections came from everywhere, and they hit all levels of the Chiefs’ passing game. From his attack and near-pick of a potential swing pass to receiver Xavier Worthy with 4:18 left in the first half to his denial of the Hail Mary that ended the game in Buffalo’s favor, Bishop was everywhere, all the time.

Wide receiver Oronde Gadsden wasn’t exactly a household name when he came into the NFL in 1995. An undrafted free agent out of Winston-Salem State (one of 15 NFL players to come from that school, with the most notable alum being former Chargers, Steelers, and Titans receiver Yancey Thigpen), Gadsden managed to catch 227 passes on 407 career targets from 1998 through 2003 for 3,252 yards and 22 touchdowns. He also caught Dan Marino’s final touchdown pass, albeit in a 62-7 Divisional Round demolition at the hands of the Jacksonville Jaguars.

But the elder Gadsden had to go through three years of purgatory before he got his chance — before that, there were unsuccessful stints with the Dallas Cowboys, the Steelers, and the Frankfurt Galaxy of the World League of American Football before a 93-catch season with the Arena League’s Portland Forest Dragons (no, really) in 1998 got the Dolphins’ attention.

Gadsden’s son, Oronde II, went similarly under the radar, though he went to a bigger school (Syracuse), and he didn’t have to run through alternate leagues, playing for teams with Led Zeppelin lyric names. Gadsden II was the ninth tight end selected in the 2025 draft, and he had to wait until the 167th pick in the fifth round before the Los Angeles Chargers handed in the card with his name on it.

Gadsden had been the most productive tight end in Syracuse history, and his background as a former wide receiver set the 6’5, 236-pounder up pretty well in Jim Harbaugh’s and Greg Roman’s passing game. The debits that took him to the fifth round were more about in-line blocking, his height and weight, and whether he’d be able to deal with next-level defenders in traffic.

Little did anybody know…

There are certain teams that lean into 6OL personnel — six offensive linemen on the field — more than others. In 2024, the Buffalo Bills led the league by far in 6OL snaps, with Alec Anderson as the primary instigator. This season, when Jayden Daniels got hurt early and the Washington Commanders were left with Marcus Mariota as their quarterback, offensive coordinator Kliff Kingsbury went with heavy personnel as he had never done before with Trent Scott as the Sixth Man, and it worked very well.

The Philadelphia Eagles have been searching for their offensive identity all season long under first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo, and it’s been a rough patch for the most part. We all know the issues here — the passing game has been far too easy to figure out, the run game isn’t working at all, and Patullo’s preference for spread formations has left the Eagles’ power-based aspects in the lurch.

We started to see a bit of a change in Week 7, when the Eagles, who had used 6OL personnel on three snaps in Weeks 1-6, pushed it up to 14 snaps in their 28-22 win over the Minnesota Vikings, and kept it going with 10 6OL snaps against the New York Giants on Sunday in the 38-20 win that put the Eagles at 6-2 on the season.

For Philly, the Sixth Man is Fred Johnson, the 28-year-old veteran who has bounced around the league from 2019 until now — he’s had stints with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Cincinnati Bengals, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Eagles (2022-2024), Jacksonville Jaguars, and the Eagles again when the team traded a seventh-round pick to the Jags for Johnson’s services on August 25. Early in the season, Johnson got some reps as Lane Johnson’s injury replacement at right tackle, but he didn’t really announce his presence with authority until Patullo stopped dithering around with specific shotgun and pistol stuff that didn’t work, and went heavy on intelligent smashmouth instead.

Against the Giants, it REALLY worked.

One of the unexpected sources of quarterback pressure against the Saints was veteran edge defender Anthony Nelson, who had his first start of the season while Haason Reddick was dealing with a sprained ankle and some knee soreness. Nelson, the 2019 fourth-round pick out of Iowa who is now on his third contract with the team after re-upping this past offseason to a two-year, $10 million deal with $5.5 million guaranteed, led the way in all possible ways.

Nelson has been a fine and underrated pressure generator at times throughout his career, but Sunday’s game was entirely ridiculous. Not only did Nelson have two solo sacks and five total pressures, he also came up with a forced fumble and a pick-six in which he scored the rare trio of pass deflection/interception/touchdown return.

Rattler must have been wondering what kind of alien he was dealing with.

Nelson became the fourth player in recorded NFL history to come up with two sacks, a forced fumble, and a pick-six in the same game, which is quite the note for one’s resume.

“You definitely get into that zone and a lot of it has to do with the guys around you,” Nelson said postgame. “We have a lot of guys going after the ball, getting strips and punching out and some that were close that ended up being incompletions, so when everybody is doing it, it gets contagious and you can feel it. It gives you confidence.”

Predicting the success of players in the future is obviously not a foolproof concept, but there are signs worth watching. On the defensive side of the ball, if you have a defensive lineman with a lot of quarterback pressures but a low sack total, it could be that the quarterback takedowns are on the verge. Similarly, if you have a defensive back who’s racking up pass deflections all over the place, it may be that the interceptions are coming, and at that point, said defensive back could enter the NFL’s elite at his position.

Welcome to the world of Cincinnati Bengals cornerback DJ Turner II.

For a lot of cornerbacks, the age 29 year is one you don’t want to face. You’re right around the corner from your thirties, and that’s generally when you want to start thinking about broadcasting. Cornerbacks who have been above average to great earlier in their careers can really fall off once the big two-nine happens. Xavier Rhodes, Rasul Douglas, Darius Slay, Marlon Humphrey, Patrick Peterson, and Xavien Howard are among those formerly great defenders who unfortunately tripped all over themselves at 29. Since 2000, and there are far more who have done so than those who have avoided the age-curve curse.

So then, what is there to say about cornerback Jamel Dean of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who is not only having his best season at age 29, but is on the way to making a bit of history? Dean hit that dangerous age on October 15, and he won his first NFC Defensive Player of the Week award on his birthday after his bravura performance against the San Francisco 49ers in Week 6.

In that 30-19 Bucs win, Dean had a sack, a forced fumble, and he gave up three catches on five targets for 104 yards, 51 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, an interception, and an opponent passer rating of 64.6. Dean became the first player with the sack/forced fumble/interception trio in the 2025 season, and the first Bucs player to win NFC Defensive Player of the Week since Ronde Barber won it in Week 1 of the 2012 season.

In the bigger picture, Jones can do it all — blow up run fits from the second level, rush from the edge, and he’s dynamite when utilized as a stand-up three-tech rusher in Seattle’s overload blitz packages. At his best, Jones has a Fred Warner-ish aspect to his game. We’re not saying that Jones is at Warner’s level right now, because no linebacker is, but the combination of effectiveness and versatility does bring some thoughts to mind.

I was at the Seahawks-Texans game, and I asked Jones how important it is to be that do-it-all guy.

Obviously, when the Chicago Bears hired Ben Johnson to be their new head coach, the main reason was Johnson’s radical success with Jared Goff in Detroit when Johnson was the Detroit Lions’ offensive coordinator, and the hope that Johnson could perform the same miracles with Caleb Williams.

That process is still in progress, but when I used to watch the Lions and the Ben Johnson offense, I had as much or more fun watching the run game as the aerial show. As a run designer, Johnson will throw anything and everything at you, and with David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs, he had the perfect Thunder and Lightning (or in their case, Sonic and Hedgehog) duo to make it all go.

It took a second for the Bears to get the hang of those run concepts, but over the last two games — wins over the Washington Commanders and New Orleans Saints that took the Bears to 4-2 on the season — veteran D’Andre Swift has been the NFL’s second-most productive running back behind only Rico Dowdle of the Carolina Panthers, another Secret Superstar. In that stretch, Swift has 232 rushing yards and a touchdown on 33 carries for a 7.0 yards-per-carry average, three forced missed tackles, and five runs of 15 or more yards.

Johnson and Swift have worked together before, of course.

Falcons defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich, who coached Atlanta’s defense in 2020 when Dan Quinn was fired after an 0-5 start and Morris was elevated to head coach from his former DC position, had a bit of a rocky start in his return in 2025, but things have been sailing along quite nicely since then. Ulbrich picked up some ideas during his time with the New York Jets in the interim, and this led to the signing of former Las Vegas Raiders defensive back Divine Deablo — and Deablo’s subsequent switch to linebacker. Deablo was a decent box safety/linebacker hybrid and occasional blitzer in four years with the Raiders, but the changes of scenery and position have done wonders. Now, Deablo is the true epicenter of this underground, underrated defense. While fellow linebacker Kaden Elliss is raising all kinds of hell as more of a pass-rusher, Deablo holds things down in the middle.

This season, Deablo has 20 solo tackles, 13 stops, six quarterback hurries, and in coverage, he’s allowed four catches on seven targets for 40 yards, 26 yards after the catch, four pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 73.5. Against the Bills, he was equally devastating when blowing up run plays or dropping into coverage.

Things started to take a downturn in 2023, White’s last season with the Bucs. His productivity was not the same, and contractual issues had him moving on. The Philadelphia Eagles signed him to a one-year, $4 million contract with $3.5 million guaranteed in March 2024, and released him in October. White never played a snap for the impending Super Bowl champs. The Houston Texans took a shot on White a couple weeks after the Eagles punched his ticket, but little happened there. Injuries had taken their toll, and in 2022, White wasn’t entirely sure he still wanted to do the whole football thing.

By the time the Raiders signed White on March 28, he was an afterthought at best. New head coach Pete Carroll, who’s more than familiar with the process by which reclamation projects can succeed again, said in September that guys with that mountain to climb are a major part of the program.

It was certainly a strength for the Raiders in their 20-10 Sunday win over the Tennessee Titans, and White was the primary instigator with six total tackles, a sack, a forced fumble and an interception… in the first half alone. White is the first Raiders player to record a sack, forced fumble and interception in a game since Khalil Mack in 2016, and in White’s case, it didn’t take long at all.

Not too bad for a guy rolling on a one-year, $1.170 million contract with no guaranteed money.

After a 2024 season in which Dowdle gained 1,079 rushing yards and scored two rushing touchdowns on 235 carries, adding 39 catches on 49 targets for 249 yards and three more touchdowns, he was deemed irrelevant by the team that signed him as an undrafted free agent out of South Carolina in 2020. Dowdle didn’t do much for the Cowboys in his first three NFL seasons; it took an empty running back room for him to get his shot, and he did the best he could with it.

Still, he needed a new home, and the Carolina Panthers provided that with a one-year, $2.75 million contract, and the opportunity to compete with Chuba Hubbard in the backfield. Hubbard was the main man until a calf injury slowed him down in early October, and that became Dowdle’s time to shine. In Week 5 against the Miami Dolphins, Dowdle gained 206 yards and scored a rushing touchdown on 23 carries. He forced eight missed tackles, had four runs of 15 or more yards, and had just one negative run. Add in his three catches on three targets for 28 yards, and it was a bravura performance in Carolina’s 27-24 win.

In his rookie season, Vidal toted the rock just 43 times for 155 yards, and the fact that the team selected North Carolina’s Omarion Hampton with the 22nd pick in 2025 told you that the Chargers wanted a true franchise-defining back, which Hampton has the talent to be over time. Hampton validated the Chargers’ faith in him with 314 yards, two touchdowns, 22 forced missed tackles, and four runs of 15+ yards on just 66 carries through his first five NFL games. But when Hampton suffered an ankle injury against the Washington Commanders in Week 5 and was subsequently placed on injured reserve (that means he’ll be out at least four games), it was time for another solution.

Enter Mr. Vidal. The plan was for Vidal and Hassan Haskins – a much bigger back – to share the reps.

As it turns out, Haskins didn’t stand a chance, because Vidal went off against Miami’s defense. He gained 124 yards on just 18 carries with 62 yards after contact, three forced missed tackles, and four runs of 10 or more yards. Moreover, Vidal didn’t have a single negative run, and when the Dolphins stacked the box against him, Vidal spit that right back in their faces.

Then, the Cowboys grabbed him on July 22, 2025, and this would seem to be Houston’s ideal opportunity, given the Micah Parsons departure and the fact that Dallas currently ranks 31st in Defensive DVOA, and 29th in Adjusted Sack Rate, without their former superstar. Houston has done his level best to prove the point, with four sacks and eight total pressures — including two sacks and five total pressures in Dallas’ 37-22 Sunday win over the New York Jets — on just 23 pass-rushing snaps, which was his highest single-game total of the season.

Houston has just 54 pass-rushing snaps this season, and he’s gone over 10 in just two games.

Maybe the short week helped. Maybe Mac Jones, who played with Bourne in New England from 2021-2023, would provide a spark.

Whatever the reason, Bourne eliminated most concerns after that Jaguars game with a bravura performance against the Rams in an unexpected 26-23 win. Bourne caught 10 of 11 targets for a career-high 142 yards. Per Next Gen Stats, seven of those catches for 104 yards came on in-breaking routes, which is obviously a major part of Shanahan’s passing game.

The 30-year-old defensive lineman, selected by the Dallas Cowboys in the third round of the 2016 draft, has quite a few stops in his career – Dallas through 2019, the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020, the Houston Texans from 2021-2023, the San Francisco 49ers in 2024, and finally, the Cleveland Browns in 2025 after Collins signed a two-year, $20 million contract with $13 million guaranteed.

Safe to say at this point, there will be no issues keeping Collins around for a second season given the way the first one is going. Through the first five games of the season, Collins has four sacks, 17 total pressures, six tackles, three tackles for loss, and nine stops. The 6’2, 310-pound Collins may be built like an undersized nose tackle, but he can get it done all over the place – in 2025, he’s lined up 71% of the time as a three-tech tackle, and the rest of the time as an edge defender or over the tackles.

The 2025 Jaguars, under defensive coordinator Anthony Campanile, currently rank 16th in Defensive DVOA, first in opponent passer rating allowed, and tied for third in EPA per play allowed with the Detroit Lions and the Denver Broncos. They are 10th in points allowed, 15th in yards allowed, third in EPA allowed per passing attempt, 19th in EPA allowed per rushing attempt, and 23rd in quarterback pressure rate. No matter the metric, the 2025 Jaguars defense has proven that it’s an entirely different beast.

And Campanile, the man in charge of this turnaround, has never been a solo defensive coordinator at any level of football before. The closest Campanile came to that was when he served as Boston College’s co-defensive coordinator and defensive backs coach in 2018. Since then, he’s been Michigan’s linebackers coach (2019), the Miami Dolphins’ linebackers coach (2020-2023), and the Green Bay Packers’ linebackers coach (2024) before elevating to his current position.

Who is this 43-year-old native of Fair Lawn, New Jersey (you can tell from this EXTREMELY NSFW video from his time with the Dolphins, which is pure Silvio Dante) who has had such an effect on an NFL defense out of nowhere? Motivational speeches with multiple F-bombs are nice and all, but that stuff tends to vaporize pretty quickly if there’s not some weight behind it.

As C.J. Stroud said after the Texans’ 26-0 shutout win over the Tennessee Titans on Sunday, he had already studied what Marks could do.

“I was a really big fan of Woody when he was at USC. Really elusive, really crafty. I thought he did a good job in that Lincoln Riley offense. I thought today we used him in that light: spread him out, gave him some familiarity running the ball, and some plays he’s run before. He’s a very dynamic pass-catcher.”

Stroud said all that after a game in which Marks gained 69 yards and scored a rushing touchdown on 17 carries, with three forced missed tackles, and two runs of 15 or more yards. Marks also caught four passes on five targets for 50 yards and another score. Marks has seen his snaps increase in each of his four NFL games — from seven to 15 to 30 to 43 on Sunday — and that’s obviously based on merit.

Though the Chargers lost their first game of the season in a 21-18 nailbiter, Tuipulotu’s splash plays did come, and repeatedly so. Against Giants quarterback Jaxson Dart in Dart’s first NFL start, Tuipulotu gave the rook several “Welcome to the NFL” moments with four sacks (three of Dart and one of Russell Wilson) and seven total pressures. This was more of what was expected from the 2023 second-round pick out of USC, who had a career-high nine sacks last season, and notched eight sacks and 51 total pressures as a rookie.

Tuipulotu has always been an overlooked player, but he came across my radar last season when he want on an all-time tear in Weeks 8-11. In that stretch, he led the league by far with eight sacks (Jared Verse of the Los Angeles Rams and Trey Hendrickson of the Cincinnati Bengals tied for second with five), and his 22 total pressures tied with Verse for the league lead.

In 2024, the Commanders under Kingsbury lined up with six offensive linemen 21 times. They did so zero times in Weeks 1-2 with Daniels, but since then, they’ve done so 27 times, by far the highest total in the NFL, and always with veteran Trent Scott as the extra guy.

Before all of this, Scott was most famous for catching Jayden Daniels’ first regular season touchdown pass, a one-yarder in Week 3 of the 2024 season against the Cincinnati Bengals.

Now, Scott’s primary value — and it’s of more import than you may think — is to be that extra man in the blocking schemes. The Commanders have an Offensive EPA of +0.12 with Scott on the field, and +0.01 when he isn’t. Not that Scott, a 2018 undrafted free agent out of Grambling (HBCU alert!) is the second coming of Trent Williams or Tristan Wirfs; this isn’t a case where the NFL’s next great tackle finally gets his shot in a specific concept. But the ways in which Kingsbury is using Scott have allowed Scott to make the most of his attributes, and that’s what good coaching is.

In any event, a Dolphins offense that was already dealing with multiple schematic, personnel, and execution issues was dealt a severe blow. And the reason it may not be a complete death knell could come down to a guy who played his first NFL game since Jan. 7, 2024.

That would be tight end Darren Waller, who caught 52 passes on 74 targets for 552 yards and a touchdown for the New York Giants in the 2023 season, announced his retirement from the NFL on June 9, 2024, missed that entire season, and unretired once the Giants traded his rights to the Dolphins on July 1, 2025. Waller had informed the Giants that he would only return to the league if it was with the Dolphins, and that was that.

… It was a wise decision, especially in context of Hill’s injury. Waller’s statistics weren’t interstellar in his return to the NFL — three receptions on four targets for 27 yards — but there was the matter of his two touchdowns, which decided the game.

In 2024, Armstrong had a career-high 10 sacks and 51 total pressures in a career-high 450 pass-rushing snaps (747 overall) and he really ramped things up in the postseason. Four of his 10 sacks came in three playoff games, and overall, Armstrong was a major pain for opposing blockers from every gap — he lined up 13% of the time in the B-gaps, and the rest of the time outside. In Washington’s 45-31 Divisional playoff win over the Detroit Lions, Armstrong really went off with two sacks and a host of pressure.

Now, in his eighth NFL season, Armstrong appears to be better than ever. He has three sacks and 18 total pressures in just 72 pass-rushing snaps, and he’s doing it all over the place once again. Per Next Gen Stats, Armstrong’s 25.0% pressure rate ties him for the league lead with Al-Quadin Muhammad of the Detroit Lions (another Secret Superstar this week), and nobody has more total disruptions in the league through three full weeks of the 2025 season.

Through three games in the 2025 season, and especially after what he did to the Baltimore Ravens on Monday night, Muhammad doesn’t just have an NFL home now — he’s chipping in for serious upgrades. As much as some decried the Lions’ quiet approach to acquiring premium pass-rushers in free agency and the draft this offseason, you can now understand why Campbell and his coaches were like the parents who told their kids that they didn’t need to spend money at McDonalds — because “we have that at home.”

Against the Ravens in that 38-30 Monday night win, Muhammad didn’t just rack up three sacks and five total pressures in just 24 pass-rushing snaps — he did so from multiple gaps, foiling four of the five Baltimore offensive linemen he went up against.

In the 2025 offseason, when Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell and defensive coordinator Brian Flores were discussing how to fortify their defense with new players, Flores brought up a little-known cornerback who had never had more than 366 coverage snaps in his four previous NFL seasons as someone who might really pop in his playbook. So, the Vikings signed former Indianapolis Colts and Philadelphia Eagles cornerback Isaiah Rodgers to a two-year, $11.045 million contract with $7.995 million guaranteed, and hoped it would pay off as “Flo” said it might.

Turns out, that Brian Flores guy knows a thing or two about player acquisition and development. Because in Sunday’s 48-10 demolition of the Cincinnati Bengals, Rodgers had not only the game of his life, but one of the most remarkable games for any cornerback… well, ever.

There are still times when you need someone to win outside, and the guy for the Seahawks this season has been fifth-round rookie Tory Horton. The Colorado State alum went as low as he did in the draft for two reasons: concerns about strength of competition, and the knee injury that cost him half the season in 2024 for the Rams. Horton had been productive both with Nevada and Colorado State after a 2022 transfer, but few really knew how he’d hold up to the rigors of the NFL.

Horton wasn’t even an original pick — the Seahawks got the 166th overall selection they used for Horton in a trade with the Cleveland Browns that gave Cleveland the 144th pick overall, and the right to select Shedeur Sanders. So, there’s that.

Right now, it’s obvious that the Seahawks got the more pivotal player in that deal. Horton has lined up outside on 82% of his snaps this season so far, and the 6’3, 185-pound rookie doesn’t seem to have any issues with NFL competition. In Sunday’s 44-13 bombing of the New Orleans Saints, Horton caught three passes on four targets for 32 yards and a touchdown; he also had a 95-yard punt return which is the longest in franchise history, and the first punt return for a touchdown the Seahawks have had since Tyler Lockett had one in Week 1 of the 2015 season.

The Colts’ 33-8 season-opening win wasn’t something that Jones could really hang his hat on, because the current Dolphins might be the NFL’s most dysfunctional team if the Cincinnati Bengals could relax for a second. But in that game, Jones showed enough command of the offense to be a bright spot as the team headed into Sunday’s game against the Denver Broncos, owners of one of the NFL’s best defenses.

This was Jones’ star turn, and he took it with an authority he’d never shown before. No matter what Vance Joseph’s Denver defense did, Jones had a ready answer. Per Next Gen Stats, the Broncos pressured Jones on 16 of his 38 dropbacks and blitzed him at a 71.1% rate that was the highest he had ever faced. The quarterback who had previously been awful when disrupted completed 16 of his 25 attempts while facing five or more pass rushers for 265 yards and a touchdown, the fourth-most passing yards against the blitz in any game in the Next Gen Stats era (since 2016).

Against the New York Giants on Sunday in a 40-37 win in which there were seven scoring plays in the fourth quarter alone for both teams, Williams gained 97 yards and scored a touchdown on his 18 carries. He forced six missed tackles, and had three runs of 10 or more yards. The passing game was obviously the main thing in this game — Dak Prescott threw the ball 52 times, completing 38 passes for 361 yards, two touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 96.7 — but when Dallas needed explosive plays in the run game, they were there for once.

Maybe I was early on the Rattler bandwagon, but it was my belief that he could end the Saints’ post-Drew Brees quarterback purgatory sooner than later with his explosive potential, as long as his coaches could rein in Rattler’s YOLO tendencies. Rattler has met Kellen Moore at least halfway as a more efficient and managed thrower of the football this season, and the results are starting to show up in a credible sense. The idea of this franchise selecting Tyler Shough in the second round of the 2025 draft might be one of those “Oh well, whatever, never mind” things if Rattler continues at this pace.

So far this season, Rattler’s success has been less about the unexpected play, and more about his ability to play within the structure of Moore’s offense. Per Next Gen Stats, Rattler completed 11 of 14 quick passes for 77 yards against the 49ers, throwing all three of his touchdowns in fewer than 2.5 seconds. He also completed 14 of 20 passes for 130 yards on passes over 2.5 seconds. so it’s not as if Moore and his staff have turned Rattler into Captain Checkdown — this is really about Rattler unlocking the entire playbook.

Week 2 against the Washington Commanders on Thursday night would be a different test. This time, Nixon left it all up to nobody but himself. He was targeted five times, and not only did he not allow a completion, each of his five targets became pass breakups in Green Bay’s 27-18 win that was nowhere near as close as the score would indicate.

“The ball was just coming my way,” said Nixon, whose five pass breakups were the most by a Packers defender since Jaire Alexander’s five vs. the Los Angeles Rams in 2018.

“I usually don’t get that many targets in a game, but I was in my zone. I knew what I can do, and what I’m capable of, but y’all just understanding it now.”

The Commanders certainly had faith. They traded Robinson to the San Francisco 49ers on August 22, and put Croskey-Merritt behind Ekeler on the depth chart. As Ekeler is more of a do-it-all back with heavy receiving chops as opposed to a true sustaining piece of the offense — that was Robinson’s gig — things lined up perfectly for the 5’11, 208-pound Croskey-Merritt (who got his “Bill” nickname as a kid due to an unfortunate haircut) to announce his presence with all kinds of authority.

Against the New York Giants in Washington’s 21-6 Week 1 win, Croskey-Merritt did just that, and he made it look easy against a defensive line that is among the league’s most talented. Overall, Croskey-Merritt ran the ball 10 times for 82 yards and a touchdown, and as an agent of the Pistol run game, he was lethal on snap after snap. All 10 of his runs came out of some sort of Pistol look, usually with blocking tight end John Bates (the best at what he does in the NFL) and new addition Deebo Samuel adding spice to the rice, Croskey-Merritt showed patience, decisiveness, horizontal quickness, vertical second-level speed, and the ability to run after contact you would expect out of a back with a lot more skins on the wall, and a much higher draft position.

Among receivers selected in the 2023 draft, Johnson came into the 2025 season ranked 13th in targets (163), 18th in receptions (93), 17th in receiving yards (1,142), and tied for third with 10 receiving touchdowns. One statistic that Johnson has had no issue with regarding the league leaders is drops — especially in the 2024 season, when he had six on 98 targets. Drop tendencies at this level generally don’t resolve themselves, and coming into Johnston’s third season, the deserved narrative was that this was a guy with all the physical gifts in the world, and little sense of how to unleash them.

Then came the Chargers’ 27-21 Week 1 win over the Kansas City Chiefs on Friday at Corinthians Arena in São Paulo, Brazil, and Johnston’s first step in taking a sad song and making it better. Johnston’s stats weren’t of the OMG variety — he caught five passes on seven targets for 79 yards — but he did bring in two touchdowns, and he was responsible for more than one explosive play.

Perhaps most importantly, there wasn’t a single drop on the day. Johnston looked far more like the consistent weapon the Chargers hoped they’d get when they drafted him. The Chargers had Johnston rolling to the intermediate and deep levels a lot of the time — a nice show of faith which Johnston reciprocated with his efforts.

Fields was in for another career dip in the Steel City. He got starting reps early in the season while Russell Wilson recovered from injury, and then was summarily dismissed to the role of backup and occasional gadget player when Wilson returned to the stage.

Then, it was on to the new-look New York Jets under head coach Aaron Glenn and offensive coordinator Tanner Engstrand, formerly the Detroit Lions’ pas game coordinator under Ben Johnson. As everybody reading this knows, the Jets haven’t exactly been on an all-time streak when it comes to great offensive minds in the building (Nathaniel Hackett? Really?), but the hope was that Engstrand could make the most out of Fields. The Jets were cautious with the equation; that’s why Fields only got a two-year, $40 million contract with $30 million guaranteed that made him one of the lowest-paid starting quarterbacks in the NFL.

Perhaps even the Jets didn’t completely expect what they got from Fields in his debut. Against a Steelers defense that ranked eighth in DVOA last season, Fields completed 16 of 22 passes for 218 yards, one touchdown, and four explosive passes…

…and as a runner (which most people would tell you is where his game starts and ends), Fields gained 48 yards and scored two touchdowns on 12 carries.

The 2025 New England Patriots have been a cauldron of change. A new head coach in Mike Vrabel, a new (well, old and new) offensive coordinator in Josh McDaniels, a new defensive coordinator in Terrell Williams, and all kinds of new defensive talent with free agents Milton Williams, Robert Spillane, and Carlton Davis. All great potential additions, but in the Patriots’ 20-13 Week 1 loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, it was another defensive addition, and a bit of an afterthought with all the other churn, who defined his role more than anybody else on the field.

That relative afterthought was edge-rusher Harold Landry, the former Tennessee Titan who signed a three-year, $43.5 million contract with $26 million guaranteed to add his talents to the equation. At his peak in the 2021 and 2023 seasons, Landry showed all the characteristics you want in an edge disruptor, but his career has also been interrupted by injuries.

Then came the season opener against the Raiders, and what Landry did to poor Las Vegas right tackle D.J. Glaze, and the rest of the right side of the Raiders’ offensive line. Landry had three sacks and eight total pressures in the game, all from the defensive left side, and whether he was looping inside to find the open gap, or simply abusing Glaze outside, the Raiders had no answers for him.