Sunday’s Best is a weekly column highlighting the NFL’s top five performers. Each week, the players who are spotlighted not only put up big numbers but also set the tone for their teams and shape the storylines of Sunday.
November football has a way of revealing which teams and players are legitimate and who’s just hot for a week. From now until the Super Bowl, the margins get tighter, the stages get bigger and the stakes only rise. The best football of the year is coming fast, and the stars who showed up this week look ready to take it the rest of the way.
Here are this week’s Sunday’s Best.
Jonathan Taylor, RB, Indianapolis Colts
There are games you remember, and then there are games that rewrite how you talk about a player. What Jonathan Taylor did Sunday should put him as the front-runner for the MVP award.
In Berlin, Taylor gave 72,000 fans a memory they’ll take home forever. He ran for 244 yards and three touchdowns in the single-best performance in an NFL international game.
The 65th score of his career came from evading a buildup in the trenches, followed by a burst and then a straight-line 83-yard sprint toward the Marathon steps. One cut, one lane, and he was gone before anyone in a Falcons uniform even understood what happened.
Then, in overtime, with the stadium on edge and the game hanging in the balance, everyone knew who was getting the ball.
Taylor shook Falcons safety Jessie Bates III, gliding in untouched and sending the Colts home with a victory and an 8–2 record heading into the bye.
We’re watching one of the best backs in football at his peak. He’s sitting at 1,139 rushing yards and 17 total touchdowns through ten games. And here’s the wild part: 228 of those yards in Berlin came after contact. No other running back has done that in a game since 2017.
He’s already passed Adrian Peterson’s 2012 touchdown total, he’s pacing ahead of Saquon Barkley’s 2024 breakout year, and his four three-touchdown games put him right behind LaDainian Tomlinson’s MVP season.
TreVeyon Henderson, RB, New England Patriots
The New England Patriots selected TreVeyon Henderson with the 38th overall pick in the NFL draft this year, and this past week, he finally got his first start.
In a game that hung in the balance deep into the fourth quarter, New England’s defense came up with a critical fourth-down stop. On the very next drive, Henderson turned that momentum into a knockout 69-yard touchdown.
He finished with a career-high 147 yards and two touchdowns on just 14 carries, showing the same explosiveness that made him a star at Ohio State. The Patriots now sit at 8–2, winners of seven straight and tied for first in the AFC.
Matthew Stafford, QB, Los Angeles Rams
Matthew Stafford is 17 years into his NFL career and somehow playing with more control, confidence and sharpness than quarterbacks half his age.
Stafford and the Rams walked into Levi’s Stadium and lit up a 49ers defense that’s usually the one dictating terms in the rivalry. Stafford threw for 280 yards and four touchdowns, moving the ball with the kind of precision that’s become the theme over the last month and a half. He now has 20 touchdowns and zero interceptions over his last six games.
Kyren Williams added two rushing touchdowns, Sean McVay stayed aggressive, and the Rams hung 42 points on a division rival they’ve been chasing for years. For a third straight week, the Rams dropped 34-plus points and got at least four touchdown passes out of their quarterback. The NFC West is suddenly tight at the top, but Stafford has Los Angeles looking very comfortable amidst the chaos.
Each game from here carries more consequences, but the stars who showed out this week look ready to endure that weight.
If this is how November starts, December is about to be fun.