Gaffney's 2025 NFL Week 12 Team of the Week

Jack Gaffney
7 hours ago
3 min read

Unfortunately, the NFL Week 12 slate never really recovered after what was an electric 1:00 pm window, but this week was newsworthy if nothing else. The Chiefs finding a way to live for another week, a certain NFC West QB getting himself a nice notch in his award season resume, and what can only be described as a catastrophic collapse by the Philadelphia Eagles against the Dallas Cowboys, among other things. Regardless, here's my top performers going into the Thanksgiving triple header on Thursday.

Gaffney's 2025 NFL Week 12 Team of the Week (First-Team)

Offense: Matthew Stafford (QB, LAR), Creed Humphrey (OL, KC), Jahmyr Gibbs (RB, DET), Jaxon Smith-Njigba (Pass Catcher, SEA)

Regardless of betting publicly available odds, you could practically feel Matt Stafford jockey his way to the front of the NFL MVP race two nights ago against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Despite this weekend's outing, probably not even cracking his five best on the year, Stafford made extremely short work of Tampa's defense with three scores, including two against the blitz, in which he put up a passer rating north of 130. Surgical, surgical, surgical performance under the lights, and it's hard to say there's another team in LA's league rn.

Elsewhere, Creed Humphrey was a very steady presence in front of Patrick Mahomes on a day Kansas City lost Trey Smith to a full ankle sprain, Jaxon Smith-Njigba continues to light up every defensive back that continues to lineup in front of him, going for two scores and a season high 167 yards on eight grabs, and what else can you say about Jahmyr Gibbs this week? North of 250 scrimmage yards and 219 rushing yards on the Giants, including the game-winning run in OT, you see below. Also worth mentioning is that Gibbs' 15.5 rush EPA is the best by any qualifying running back all season, and he did it on just 15 carries.

Defense: Leonard Williams (IDL, SEA), Will Anderson (EDGE, HOU), Germaine Pratt (LB, IND), Cobie Durant (DB, LAR)

Might as well get straight to the main event here and talk about Will Anderson, who was borderline unstopable on Thursday Night against the Buffalo Bills. His nine-pressure, 2.5 sack performance brings him to two games with nine pressures on the year, a feat that only Micah Parsons has also hit among pass rushers. Furthermore, his six stops tracked by NFLPro would also be a season high, and this would also be Anderson's fourth game of the year with a pressure rate north of 27.5 percent, putting him level with Denver's Nik Bonitto. A superhuman night for a team that needed a big home win under the lights.

The other key guy to highlight in this group would be Rams corner Cobie Durant, who was amongst the outright league leaders in coverage EPA in Week 12, and whose pick six for LA effectively ended things really early for the Bucs by putting them in a 21-point hole. This PBU on Emeka Egbuka was nothing if not a phenomenal play on a ball that admittedly was a bit underthrown.

Rookies: Cam Ward (QB, TEN) and Darius Alexander (IDL, NYG)

Haven't been able to say a ton about Cam Ward this year given what he's had to deal with around in this year, but even in a loss to a great Seattle team, I think it says a lot about him that he had a honest to god good game (cicumstacially) against a Seattle defense that pressured him on 42 percent of his 50 dropbacks. It may not sound like much, but the 4.5 EPA and 0.09 EPA per dropback numbers were season highs, and this is now his fourth game of 2025 going over 250 passing yards.

Giants' rookie Darius Alexander hasn't had much to show on the stat sheet this year, but that changed in Detroit when he picked up a pair of third-down sacks on Jared Goff, the first of which was a very decisive pass rush win on Lions left guard Kayode Awosika. He didn't get much play against the run this week, but his 33 snaps (25 pass rushing) are an early career high, as were the three pressures, four tackles, and two stops on the afternoon. He's a guy I'd feel good about moving forward on what's already a great Giants defensive front.