Malik Willis, Ladd McConkey among Secret Superstars for Week…

As any NFL season progresses, there will be more unheralded players who rise up from humble beginnings to become factors, and guys whose careers have gone sideways who somehow find the road back to relevance.

We like to celebrate these players every week in “Secret Superstars.” This week, we have a backup quarterback who looks like a starter all of a sudden, a receiver who actually gives Justin Herbert hope, Baker Mayfield’s new best buddy, and a Texans safety who helped engineer Anthony Richardson’s benching.

Malik Willis, QB, Green Bay Packers

When Jordan Love limped off the field with 12:08 left in the third quarter during Sunday’s game with a groin injury against the Jacksonville Jaguars, it marked the second time this season that Malik Willis, the 2022 third-round pick of the Tennessee Titans, had to sub for the Packers’ franchise quarterback. Love suffered a sprained MCL against the Eagles near the end of the season opener, and Willis played well in two games as a sub. Against the Jags in a 30-27 win that lifted Green Bay to a 6-2 record, Willis’ stats weren’t amazing – four completions in five attempts for 80 yards and a touchdown – but there was one play that showed Willis’ growth as a quarterback and head coach Matt LaFleur’s confidence in him.

With 1:13 left in what was then a 27-27 game, Willis hit receiver Jayden Reed on a 51-yard vertical leak route that set up Brandon McManus’ 24-yard game-winner. The most impressive part of this play is that Willis audibled into it at the line of scrimmage.

“Yeah, I was just looking for the rotation,” LaFleur said. “Rotation came down. We ran the — it was the exact same play, essentially, two plays in a row, where we didn’t get the look. They brought a nickel pressure on the first play. Didn’t get the look for it. And then the second play, they showed strong rotation. Got the look, and the rest is history.”

Willis, who called the audible, was calm in the moment.

“No, we try to just take it one play at a time,” Willis said of the play. “We were looking for a certain look and we didn’t get it the first time. Actually, we ran it twice. We just ran the first play. And then we ran it again and we got the look we were looking for and we just canned right into it. It was perfect. Love to see it.”

Sounds like a professional quarterback to me. LaFleur has said that Love’s injury is not serious enough to keep him out for a long time (he’s day-to-day, as are we all), but as long as the LaFleur-Willis connection continues, all is not lost in Titletown.

Isaac Guerendo, RB, San Francisco 49ers

It seems like every week, there’s another 49ers rookie tearing it up on the field. That’s the quality of San Francisco’s 2024 draft class overall, and with first-rounder Ricky Pearsall returning to action 50 days after getting shot in the chest in an alleged armed robbery attempt, that class is about to get even better.

Pearsall caught four passes for 38 yards in his NFL debut and added a 39-yard run, but the real rookie star of San Francisco’s 30-24 win over the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday was Isaac Guerendo, the 6’1, 225-pound fourth-round running back from Louisville. Kyle Shanahan and his coaches have no problem figuring out how to utilize Guerendo’s combination of size, power, and speed – he ran a 4.33-second 40-yard dash at the scouting combine, which is 98th percentile for running backs.

It all showed up on Sunday, when Guerendo carried the rock 14 times for 85 yards, a touchdown, another touchdown he could have had if he didn’t pull up to give the 49ers more time near the end of the game, 6.1 yards per carry, three explosive runs, and four forced missed tackles.

Christian McCaffrey has been out all season with knee and hamstring issues, and without Guerendo, who knows where San Francisco’s run game might be? Shanahan’s system is primed to make just about any running back look better, but Guerendo is far more than just a widget in a scheme.

Ladd McConkey, WR, Los Angeles Chargers

In Week 7, Justin Herbert completed 27 of 39 passes for 349 yards against the Arizona Cardinals and had no passing touchdowns to show for it in a 17-15 loss, leading Chargers fans to rightly bemoan the state of the team’s cap-strapped receiver corps. It was time for second-round rookie Ladd McConkey from Georgia to show up as never before, and that’s what McConkey did.

In LA’s 26-8 win over the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, McConkey caught all six of his targets from Herbert for 111 yards and two touchdowns. McConkey became the first Chargers rookie to record a 100-yard game since Keenan Allen did it in 2013.

Whether he was slow-rolling cornerbacks on deep vertical routes, or posting up safeties in the end zone as you might not expect from a 6’0, 185-pound guy, McConkey certainly looked like a legitimate WR1 in Greg Roman’s troubled offense, and nobody on the team disagreed after the game.

“He just makes plays and you have to find ways to get him the ball,” Herbert said. “He’s a complete receiver. To have that short game and intermediate routes where he’s been so good at it, especially on third downs. Now you add open up some of those go-balls that you have to respect … we’ve got a true ballplayer on our hands.”

And when you have your head coach comparing you to Steve Smith Sr.? That’s a spicy meatball.

Cade Otton, TE, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Buccaneers came into their Week 8 matchup against the Atlanta Falcons with a desperate need for ideal targets for Baker Mayfeld with both Mike Evans and Chris Godwin out due to injury. They needed another alpha target if they were going to beat the Atlanta Falcons in a crucial NFC South matchup on Sunday. Tampa Bay fell just short in that regard on the wrong side of a 31-26 score, but tight end Cade Otton was more than happy to be Baker Mayfield’s new best friend.

Otton caught nine catches on 10 targets for 81 yards, two touchdowns, 39 yards after the catch, and one impressively athletic play in which he hurdled safety Jessie Bates III on a 29-yard catch early in the second quarter.

“Coach [offensive coordinator Liam] Coen had a great concept, and I was able to get open over the middle,” Otton said of his big catch of the day (first play on the reel below). “Baker threw a great ball, and I saw the safety coming in low, so I tried to pick my legs up a little bit, and I was able to get past him and made a big gain. It was a great play all around, and obviously the line had great protection too. So, whether it was me or someone else, we just need to keep doing those things and executing at every level.”

It could have been anybody, but it was Otton, and not for the first time. In Week 7, Otton caught eight passes on 10 targets for 100 yards while all the receivers around him were getting hurt.

“Cade’s a guy that sometimes gets overshadowed by the rest of this skill group that we have, but he does a ton of the dirty work,” Mayfield said after the Falcons game. “He does a lot for this offense, run game, pass game, and today he made a lot of plays that we needed. Today was a just an example of him getting a chance to showcase his skills. He’s obviously a very intelligent player, just being in the right spot at the right time in some of these zone-coverage plays that we had dialed up. He did a great job.”

Johnny (Jer’Zhan) Newton, DI, Washington Commanders

When watching the interior defensive linemen eligible for the 2024 NFL draft, the guy who stood out to me above all else was Illinois’ Johnny (Jer’Zhan) Newton, who put up seven sacks and 43 total pressures in his final collegiate season despite playing through Jones fractures in both feet. Newton’s health status dropped him to the 36th overall pick in the second round, and the Commanders jumped on the acceptable risk for a player who should have been taken somewhere in the first 20 picks.

Newton got off to a bit of a slow start in his NFL career, but he started to show his best in Washington’s 18-15 win over the Chicago Bears. Jayden Daniels’ Hail Mary touchdown pass, and Tyrique Stevenson’s coverage brainfart were the big stories of the game, but let’s not overlook the recent improvement in Washington’s defense. Newton, who had a sack, three quarterback hits, and three quarterback hurries in just 18 pass-rushing snaps, is now a big part of that. He also had two stops and a fumble recovery.

“I felt him from the three-technique, [and] I felt him from inside to get the fumble recovery,” head coach Dan Quinn said. “You guys have heard me say, ‘This is coming,’ and I felt that. It was good to see the pressure that he was able to generate from the inside,”

If Newton is able to live up to his impressive potential this season, the 6-2 Commanders will be that much more dangerous.

Za’Darius Smith, DL, Cleveland Browns

It remains to be seen whether Smith will be traded by the November 5 deadline, as has been widely reported – maybe the Browns see themselves as not completely out of it with Jameis Winston at quarterback. But if Smith did just play his last game in a Cleveland uniform, he sure went out with a bang. In Cleveland’s last-second 29-24 win over the Baltimore Ravens, Smith sacked Lamar Jackson once, and pressured him eight other times, making life pure hell for Baltimore’s offensive line.

If the Browns now see themselves as potential contenders with Winston despite their 2-6 record – and stranger things have happened – they should keep Smith on board, because the combination of Smith and Myles Garrett (who matched Garrett against the Ravens with nine total pressures) is one of the NFL’s best, and you can never have too many pass-rushers when you’re trying to get out of a hole you created on your own with a quarterback whose off-the-field reputation is somehow worse than his lackluster play this season prior to injury.

Eric Murray, Safety, Houston Texans

It was announced on Tuesday that the Indianapolis Colts will ride with Joe Flacco as opposed to Anthony Richardson at quarterback for at least the near future. There were several reasons for the decision: Richardson couldn’t get out of his own way in Indy’s 23-20 Sunday loss to the Houston Texans, his decision to tap out for a play in the second half reverberated throughout the locker room (this is not something NFL players do because they’re tired), and the Colts are 4-4. With Flacco in that Texans game, they’d probably be 5-3, fighting it out with Houston for control of the AFC South. This is not yet a team in developmental mode for next season.

A more under-the-radar reason? Every time Richardson threw a ball in the general vicinity of Texans safety Eric Murray, unfortunate results were sure to follow. Murray is far from the biggest name in the Texans’ secondary, but the 2016 fourth-round pick of the Kansas City Chiefs has been an underrated part of DeMeco Ryans’ defense all season. And against the Colts, Murray allowed two catches on six targets for 30 yards, 16 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, no interceptions, three big pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 50.7.

“I thought Eric did a really nice job to get his hands on three passes there and bat them down. Tackling, everything, he did a really good job for us. Not only Eric, having Kamari [Lassiter] back was huge for us and the way he competed and made plays. [Derek] Stingley [Jr.], thought he did a great job. Had some guys there that were open. Stingley was playing with unbelievable effort to make a couple plays on the ball. Our back end, just all those guys stepped up and made plays.”

They did, and given Houston’s receiver issues with Stefon Diggs lost for the rest of the season with a torn ACL, and Nico Collins still laid up with a hamstring issue, that defense is more important to Houston’s competitive interests than it’s been all season.