NFL Week Nine Star Performers
What a week!! How many games were 17-17 before the final score?! This is why we love football!
Except, when we are forced to watch the Buccaneers vs. Rams game by Sky Sports…
Week Nine did see TB12 break the 100,000yd barrier (inc post season) which is absolutely incredible, but he wasn’t a candidate for player of the week, read on to find out who was.
Joe Mixon
RB, Cincinnati Bengals, W 42-21 vs Panthers
Easy start to this week. Five touchdowns, one on through the air and four on the ground. It was always going to be Mixon. Yeah, he’s been hellishly quiet in weeks one to eight compared to his blockbuster 153 yds of ground gain this week, but he reminded us why he was so important to the Bengals Super Bowl run last season.
His catch in the endzone was sublime too, a play after a practically identical play was ruled out for a foot out of bounds, Mixon showed incredible skill to get both his feet down from Joe Burrows deep shot into the right hand of the endzone. We must remember that they did it against the abject 2-7 Panthers and they’ll face sterner opposition though possibly not next week as they look for Week One revenge against the Steelers.
Sauce Gardner
CB, New York Jets, W 20-17 vs Bills
I was going to share the plaudits between Gardner and his CB partner DJ Reed as these two guys are a dynamic duo.
However, Gardner’s yards allowed numbers have been ridiculously low and his ability to make Josh Allen look human this week really raised my eyebrows. Stefon Diggs cooked him for a chunk play early on, but Sauce came back and locked the Jets secondary down. On top of being right over Gabe Davis whilst knocking the ball down on the game sealing play, he recorded three solo tackles contributing to seven total tackles.
All this against what we should still consider to be the best offence in the league. It was another incredible outing for a rookie, who is surely the headline DROTY candidate.
Tua Tagovailoa
QB, Miami Dolphins, W 35-32 @ Bears
There were loads of good candidates for my third spot on this list this week, three guys grabbed three sacks a piece (Judon, Hargrave and Uche). Jalen Hurts torched the Houston D on Thursday night. Justin Houston had a barnstorming game against the Saints on MNF and a bunch of Tight Ends had great nights (see: Kelce, Goedart, Fant and Hockenson – on a new team!).
Just on the other side of the ball, Justin Fields finally showed us why he was so prized by the Bears when selected him at eleven last season as he broke Michael Vick’s QB single-game regular season rushing record.
But my shout goes to Tua once again. He was imperious. He protected the ball really well, his D didn’t do enough to get the mediocre Bears off the field so he did the work himself. 302yds on 21 completions and three touchdowns. Outside of Hurts, Mahomes and Allen he’s leading the best of the rest.
A week to forget for… Sam Ehlinger
QB, Indianapolis Colts, L3-26 @ Patriots
When the Colts benched Matt Ryan two weeks ago, some stirrings of superlative pre-season performances came to the fore for the 2021 sixth-round draft pick.
But Foxborough is a tough place to go in the regular season at the best of times and the revamped O-Line didn’t do enough to protect the former Longhorns QB. Taking nine sacks, throwing up an INT and finishing with a QB rating of just 45.6, it was a bad night, which turned into a bad couple of days following head coach Frank Reich’s sacking.
Hopefully the past few days don’t scar the memory for too long and a bounce back game in the warmer climes of Las Vegas next week might help him. Equally, Maxx Crosby might be licking his lips right now.
