Category: Secret Superstars

Secret Superstars for Week 2 of the 2022 NFL season

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar points out the NFL’s great performances by unheralded players in his weekly Secret Superstars team.

There are all kinds of reasons that NFL players are underrated.

Perhaps they’re in systems that don’t best show their skills. Maybe they’re buried on a depth chart. Or, they’re in somebody’s doghouse, and their coaches can’t see their potential. Sometimes, young players haven’t quite put it all together, but there are enough flashes to make you sit up and take notice, and when it does work, it’s all good.

Week 1 of the 2022 regular season features players at every position who showed up and showed out despite their underrated statuses, and here at Touchdown Wire, it’s our job to point them out.

Here are the Secret Superstars for Week 2 of the 2022 NFL season.

Secret Superstars for Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar features Week 1’s great underrated players on his Secret Superstars team.

There are all kinds of reasons that NFL players are underrated.

Perhaps they’re in systems that don’t best show their skills. Maybe they’re buried on a depth chart. Or, they’re in somebody’s doghouse, and their coaches can’t see their potential. Sometimes, young players haven’t quite put it all together, but there are enough flashes to make you sit up and take notice, and when it does work, it’s all good.

Week 1 of the 2022 regular season features players at every position who showed up and showed out despite their underrated statuses, and here at Touchdown Wire, it’s our job to point them out.

Here are the Secret Superstars for Week 1 of the 2022 NFL season.

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Secret Superstars for Week 3 of the 2022 NFL preseason: The defense

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar lets you in on the most prominent under-the-radar defensive performances in the final week of the 2022 NFL preseason.

With final cuts just around the corner (all teams must reduce their rosters to 53 by Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. EST), and the 2022 regular season starting Thursday, September 8, anybody who doesn’t have a lock on a starting job tends to see the final week of the preseason as a sort of Hunger Games. At this point, you’re not just trying to impress your coaches and your teammates — you’re just trying to hang onto the roster spot you have, or give enough of an effort to make other teams aware. Perhaps one of those teams will pick you up if you do get cut.

Our Secret Superstars list for that final week of the preseason has a lot of guys who may have either evaded the Turk (the guy who comes to your room, knocks on your door, and quietly asks you to bring your playbook to the head coach’s office to let you know you’re off the team), or have done enough to eliminate any doubt as to their veracity as starters in the league.

The clock is ticking, oxygen is getting thin, and it’s all about to be for real. Here are the under-the-radar players who did the most to advance their cases for themselves in Week 3 of the 2022 preseason. Since there were so many of them this week, we’re splitting the list into two parts. The Secret Superstars All-Offense team is right here.

Secret Superstars for Week 3 of the 2022 NFL preseason: The offense

Secret Superstars for Week 3 of the 2022 NFL preseason: The offense

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar lets you in on the most prominent under-the-radar offensive performances in the final week of the 2022 NFL preseason.

With final cuts just around the corner (all teams must reduce their rosters to 53 by Tuesday at 4:00 p.m. EST), and the 2022 regular season starting Thursday, September 8, anybody who doesn’t have a lock on a starting job tends to see the final week of the preseason as a sort of Hunger Games. At this point, you’re not just trying to impress your coaches and your teammates — you’re just trying to hang onto the roster spot you have, or give enough of an effort to make other teams aware. Perhaps one of those teams will pick you up if you do get cut.

Our Secret Superstars list for that final week of the preseason has a lot of guys who may have either evaded the Turk (the guy who comes to your room, knocks on your door, and quietly asks you to bring your playbook to the head coach’s office to let you know you’re off the team), or have done enough to eliminate any doubt as to their veracity as starters in the league.

The clock is ticking, oxygen is getting thin, and it’s all about to be for real. Here are the under-the-radar players who did the most to advance their cases for themselves in Week 3 of the 2022 preseason. Since there were so many of them this week, we’re splitting the list into two parts. Here are the offensive Superstars, and we’ll have the defensive Superstars up presently.

Secret Superstars for Week 2 of the 2022 NFL preseason

Touchdown Wire’s Doug Farrar names the most impactful under-the-radar performers in Week 2 of the 2022 NFL preseason.

There are those who will tell you that preseason games don’t matter — they are useless to analyze, as you have starters going against starters in relatively vanilla schemes, or backups going against backups; most of whom won’t be playing in the NFL when the regular season starts.

When you peel back to the truth past that hyperbole, there’s a lot more to it than that. The story in the middle of that is a huge ball of players who are either trying to establish themselves as potential starters, or are trying to save their careers in short spaces of time. What you’re looking for is how people fit into teams and schemes, or not.

And that’s why preseason performances actually do matter — they set the tone for the regular season more often than you may think.

Here are our Secret Superstars for Week 2 of the full 2022 preseason — the guys who stood out above the rest. These are not recent first-round picks, or lead-pipe locks to make a roster; these are the guys fighting for every bit of starting opportunities.