Gaffney's 2025 NFL Week 10 Team of the Week

Jack Gaffney
Nov 11, 2025
4 min read

The first weekend in the 2025 NFL season's back-nine was...hit or miss. A pair of awful Thursday and Sunday night outings bookended what was a mostly good Sunday slate, and we got a bit of NFL and individual franchise history made in a historic outing by a certain running back out in Berlin, Germany. Let's jump straight into our Team of the Week for NFL Week 10.

Gaffney's 2025 NFL Week 9 Team of the Week (First-Team)

Offense: Jared Goff (QB, DET), (OL, PIT), Jonathan Taylor (RB, IND), Trey McBride (Pass Catcher, ARI)

Drawing the Commanders' defense has yielded some really good QB performances this year, and on Sunday, Jared Goff was the latest QB to shred them. No matter how you want to break this one down: passing yards, passer rating, outright EPA, or EPA per dropback, Goff was definitively the best performing QB in the league this week.

Now answer me this, if you will: How am I supposed to watch this clip of Commanders linebacker Frankie Luvu make the clearest business decision of all time, with Penei Sewell gunning at him, and then say the best OL in the league this week wasn't him again? Never mind the fact that the Lions ran all over them all afternoon and had a pretty good day in pass pro, but this was absurd.

Next question is this: Does anyone in the NFL have a better MVP case through 10 weeks than Colts running back Jonathan Taylor? Coming off his worst outing of the year in Pittsburgh, he exploded out in Germany for 244 yards on the ground on 32 carries and three touchdowns. That's more than the second and third best rushing performers vs. Atlanta, Christian McCaffrey (129 yards) and James Cook (87 yards) combined. This marks his fourth game this year with three touchdowns, and now his third game of the year with at least 150 rushing yards. Another three grabs for 42 yards doesn't hurt his case this week, but the only thing that could realistically be used against his MVP case at this point is that Pittsburgh game, and even then...

Although in a blowout loss, Cardinals tight end Trey McBride was a bright spot offensively for them. With 127 yards total, the Colorado State product converted two fourth downs, the latter also being for a score, plus a 3rd&13 in the second quarter.

Defense: Zach Allen (IDL, DEN), Danielle Hunter (EDGE, HOU), Tyrice Knight (LB, SEA), Talanoa Hufanga (DB, DEN)

In what was certainly one of the games of all time on Thursday night, the Broncos defense was essentially locked in vs. the Raiders, and that was especially the case for Talanoa Hufanga, who gets first team honors two weeks in a row at safety, and IDL Zach Allen who was all over the place vs. the pass and run; racking up four stops, a sack, and a pair of pressures on a night where Denver tee'd off on Geno Smith. Hufanga wasn't too far off from where he was last Sunday in Houston, meanwhile, with another nine-tackle outing with several stops and a sack. Talk about worth every penny for a defense that was already loaded coming out of the 2024 season.

As far as individual defenders go in Week 10, I'd be hard-pressed to say anyone had a better game than Texans' EDGE Danielle Hunter, who had season highs with his eight pressures and 3.5 sacks in Houston's comeback win over Jacksonville. NextGenStats also had Hunter down as being chipped nine total times, and still put up a pass rush win rate of 28.5% on 28 pass rush snaps. An unbelievable player who also cracked the top 50 on the NFL's all-time sack list with 107 on Sunday as well. If he has a few more double-digit sack seasons left in him, Hunter could very realistically crack the top 20 by the time he hangs it up.

If you slogged through what turned out to be an uninspired 4 pm window, you may have seen that Seahawks EDGE DeMarcus Lawrence pulled off a pair of fumble recovery touchdowns. Well, the man who created both of those turnovers was Tyrice Knight, who ended Sunday with two strip sacks on only four pass rush snaps, four stops, and eight tackles.

Rookies: TreVeyon Henderson (RB, NE) and Malaki Starks (SAF, BAL)

For all of those waiting on the "TreVeyon Henderson Breakout" for fantasy purposes, you got your wish in Tampa. A pair of 50-plus yard touchdowns proved vital in the Patriots upset win over the Buccaneers, and the second one was so fast that he had time to look at the New England sideline to see if they wanted him to slide down short of the goalline, which is certainly a new one.

Notably further north than Tampa, Ravens' rookie safety Malaki Starks picked up his second interception in as many weeks for Baltimore, and had a relatively quiet day in coverage otherwise. Insanity that he fell in the draft as far as he did. He was one of my favorites in this last draft class, and Ravens' fans are starting to see why.