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Each week, we offer up the very best of the NFL on a given Sunday, kind of like the fantasy football team you wished you had.
All year, we’ve picked one quarterback, two running backs, two receivers and a tight end — OK, this sounds a lot like a super-hindsight fantasy football team. We’re also recognizing an entire offensive line, a few select defensive stars and even a special-teams standout of the week.
So, let’s dive into Week 17:
This was a fairly easy one as weekly quarterback picks go. Maye was near-perfect in the Patriots’ rout of the Jets, going 19-for-21 for 256 yards, five touchdowns and zero interceptions. By passer rating, it’s the second-best game of 2025, only behind a Jalen Hurts win over the Vikings, and that’s just the idiocy of passer rating. Maye needed 7 more yards to get the “perfect” passer rating of 158.3 that Hurts had and instead settled for 157.0.
Speaking of passer rating, this vaulted Maye ahead of Matthew Stafford for best season rating in the league, though MVP will likely still go to Stafford because he has 10 more touchdown passes and three fewer interceptions – and he still plays on Monday.
It was all smiles for Drake Maye after his flawless performance against the Jets. (Evan Bernstein/Getty Images)
RB: Derrick Henry, Ravens
This was another really easy call after what was a monster game Saturday night for Henry. He had 36 carries for 216 yards and four touchdowns in a game Baltimore absolutely had to win to set up a Week 18 showdown with the Steelers. That Henry is having the season he’s had – 1,469 rushing yards and 16 touchdowns – makes it a tough call for which two backs will earn All-Pro honors this season. This week? No such difficulty.
RB: Christian McCaffrey, 49ers
With San Francisco battling for positioning among three NFC West teams in the playoffs, McCaffrey was his do-it-all self Sunday night, rushing 23 times for 140 yards and a touchdown and catching another four passes for 41 yards against the Bears.
McCaffrey is over 1,000 yards rushing on the season and needs 110 in the finale to reach 1,000 receiving for a rare 1,000-yard double. All this came against a Bears defense that held the Eagles and Packers under 20 points in the past month. San Francisco was able to rack up 42 in a playoff-preview type showdown.
WR: Ja’Marr Chase, Bengals
Who would think Chase would be on here so rarely in 2025? We’ll be tallying up which players were honored the most this season this week, but it’s a rare honor for Chase, who had seven catches for 60 yards and two touchdowns in the Bengals’ rout of the Cardinals.
It took a down week for receivers and a horrible Arizona defense to get Chase on here since that stat line usually doesn’t make the cut.
Joe Burrow connects with Ja’Marr Chase for 13-yard TD, giving Bengals early lead over Cardinals | NFL Highlights
Who had the Saints winning four in a row, or going from 1-8 to 6-10? Much of the attention is on rookie quarterback Tyler Shough, but he’s connected with Olave in a huge way – Sunday was eight catches for 119 and a touchdown, and over the last three wins, Olave has 24 for 352 and four touchdowns.
Olave is showing how good he can be when he stays healthy, ranking in the NFL top 10 for catches (100), receiving yards (1,163) and touchdown catches (nine). All three are now career highs in his four-year career.
The knock on McBride is that he’s piled up crazy numbers because Arizona is constantly behind and throwing a million passes. This is true, but he set an NFL record Sunday for the most catches ever in a season by a tight end – he’s now at 119 with a game still left, also best in the NFL at any position this season, and good for 1,174 yards and 11 touchdowns. He’s the rare tight end who is his team’s No. 1 passing option, and win or lose, that’s commendable.
We already praised Henry, but if a team rushes 53 times for 307 yards, it’s hard not to highlight their offensive line, which also protected backup Tyler Huntley and only allowed two sacks against the Packers. The Ravens have had an up-and-down season, but one remarkable consistency has been their offensive line, where five starters have missed just one start between them – from left, it’s Ronnie Stanley, Andrew Vorhees, Tyler Linderbaum, Daniel Faalele and Roger Rosengarten.
Young has quietly reset his career high with 8.5 sacks this season, including a big game in Sunday’s win over the Titans. New Orleans was down 13-3 when he sacked rookie Cam Ward and pulled the ball away, rumbling 44 yards for his first touchdown since his rookie year in 2020. He had 1.5 sacks on the day – he’s now one sack behind Cam Jordan for the team lead with one game left to play. Brandon Staley has put together a top-10 defense and could draw head-coaching interest for teams looking for a defensive-minded guy who’s been a head coach before.
Chase Young found the end zone as the Saints won their fourth straight game. (Johnnie Izquierdo/Getty Images)
DL: Andrew Van Ginkel, Vikings
Speaking of coveted defensive coordinators, Minnesota’s Brian Flores is one, and Van Ginkel made him look good on Christmas, with 1.5 sacks and two fumble recoveries in their win over Detroit. If the QB loses the snap and the defense recovers, it isn’t a sack but rather an “aborted snap,” and Van Ginkel had two of them among Jared Goff’s many turnovers. He’s up to seven sacks on the year and four in the last five games.
LB: T.J. Edwards, Bears
Chicago has been the best takeaway defense in the NFL this year, and Edwards continued that Sunday night with a pick-six off the 49ers’ Brock Purdy on the first offensive play of the game. It’s the first career touchdown for Edwards, now in his seventh NFL season. He’s missed half of this year with injuries but made his presence known early in a high-scoring game Sunday night.
Tough call here this week – you’re always choosing between guys who quietly shut down a top receiver vs. guys who piled up a bunch of splash plays. Smith is 36, the active leader in career interceptions, and added another in Minnesota’s Christmas win over Detroit, as well as a sack of Jared Goff. Only two players in NFL history have both more sacks and more interceptions, and they’re Ronde Barber and Brian Dawkins, both in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Only six kickoff returns have been returned for touchdowns this year, but Banks had one Sunday, going 95 yards late in the third quarter to help the Giants beat the Raiders – and knock themselves down in the 2026 NFL Draft. The 2023 first-round pick just started doing returns in his third season, but he’s had a solid average, even before Sunday’s touchdown.
Greg Auman is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He previously spent a decade covering the Buccaneers for the Tampa Bay Times and The Athletic. You can follow him on Twitter at @gregauman.
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