KhaDarel Hodge, Khalen Saunders lead NFL Week 5’s list of Secret Superstars

Every week in the NFL, the big news generally surrounds the game’s greatest superstars doing what they do. But it’s just as sure that every week, there will be unknown and under-the-radar guys who rise up out of seemingly nowhere to make their names better-known with impressive exploits.

Here are our Secret Superstars for Week 5 of the 2024 NFL season – the players whose games deserve more praise than they’ve received.

Tyrone Tracy Jr., RB, New York Giants

The first thing you need to know about Giants rookie running back Tyrone Tracy Jr, selected with the 167th pick in the fifth round of the 2024 draft out of Purdue, is that he was once a speedy and productive receiver at Iowa. I mention that because if you’ve watched Iowa’s offense over the last several years, you may be under the impression that such things are verboten. But there is actual tape evidence!

Tracy transferred to Purdue before the 2022 season, and made the transition to running back. In 2023, he forced 46 missed tackles on just 114 carries, gaining 714 yards (6.3 yards per carry) and scoring eight touchdowns on the ground. Tracy’s running back tape was convincing, so maybe it was that teams were unsure of his experience at that position. There’s no other reason to assume that he was worthy of a fifth-round grade.

The Seattle Seahawks would certainly grade Tracy higher than that after the rookie blasted their defense for 129 yards on 18 carries (7.2 yards per carry) with four carries of 10 or more yards. Perhaps most importantly, Tracy had no negative runs in the Giants’ surprising 29-20 win, and perhaps he’s ready to help Big Blue replace Saquon Barkley in a run game that needs reinforcements.

“I’ll just speak from since he’s been here when we drafted him and rookie mini-camp, OTAs, training camp,” Giants head coach Brian Daboll said Monday of his newest back. “He’s a smart player. I think [running backs coach] Joel Thomas has done a really good job with him. As much time on task as you can get for any player, particularly a young player, I think you improve at it. He’s improved since he’s been here. He played well yesterday, but the 10 guys around him played well, too. There were good holes, did a good job of pressing the line of scrimmage, making decisive cuts, putting his foot in the ground on that third and 2, 1 and a half, to make a big play there. But he’s done a nice job for us since he’s been here of just continually improving, which is what we want all our players to do.”

I’m glad Daboll brought up New York’s run-blocking, because it was outstanding snap after snap, and whether it was an outside run, an inside dart, or a quick cutback, Tracy was ready to make the most out of all of it.

Alec Pierce, WR, Indianapolis Colts

Okay, pretend you just didn’t read the name of the player above, and guess who’s been the NFL’s most explosive receiver in the 2024 NFL season.

Ready?

Yes, it has indeed been Alec Pierce, the Colts’ third-year receiver from Cincinnati. Through his first five games of 2024, Pierce has six receptions of 20 or more air yards (tied with DK Metcalf of the Seattle Seahawks for the league lead) for 295 yards (most in the NFL by 70 yards over Jacksonville Jaguars rookie receiver Brian Thomas Jr.), and two touchdowns (tied for second in the league with Mr. Metcalf, behind only Ja’Marr Chase’s 3).

And against the Jaguars’ beleaguered secondary in a 37-34 loss, Pierce was all over it with Joe Flacco as his quarterback. The loss wasn’t at all on the offense; it had a lot more to do with the fact that the Colts have allowed by far the most yards per game this season at 419.2. When Flacco got the ball anywhere near Pierce, good things were bound to happen. On three targets against a Jacksonville defense that tried to play a lot of two-high coverage to limit the deep pass, Pierce caught all three passes for 134 yards and a touchdown. That’s 44.3 yards per catch, which is pretty decent. Pierce is both fast and acrobatic, and Flacco just loves him.

“I was actually excited to get the ball to him because you could see — he’s coming up to me and he has ideas as to how we can get him the ball, and he’s good,” Flacco said postgame. “Man, he’s done such a good job this year, I think he’s a hell of a player. So I was actually kind of feeling bad, like man, we’ve got to get him involved in this game, we’ve got to start getting him involved in these games, like how can we do that, and then boom, he makes an awesome catch on the sideline, and then things just start rolling.

“So, a lot of credit to him to kind of keep his head in the game, stay focused, because I don’t really think he had anything before that. And then you could probably look at a couple of plays and he’s like, ‘oh, man, Joe could have gotten me here.’ You could kind of think like that and even if he did, like it didn’t show. So a lot of credit to him, like I said, for keeping his head in it and like showing up big for us at the end.”

Whether it’s Flacco or Anthony Richardson throwing Pierce the ball, any quarterback would want a consistent deep threat of this caliber.

KhaDarel Hodge, WR, Atlanta Falcons

If Atlanta Falcons receiver Drake London hadn’t suffered an injury on the play before what became the final play of Atlanta’s 36-30 overtime win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Thursday night, you might not know KhaDarel Hodge’s name at all. That’s been the story for Hodge since he came into the NFL in 2018 with the Los Angeles Rams as an undrafted free agent out of Prairie View A&M (HBCU alert).

Hodge had bounced on and off the Rams, Cleveland Browns, and Detroit Lions rosters before the Falcons signed him in 2022 as a reserve receiver and special-teamer, and Hodge hadn’t been targeted once this season before the Tampa Bay game. But he had already caught a 22-yard skinny post against the Bucs in the second quarter, so there were no worries from Kirk Cousins when it was time to hit Hodge on a 6-yard sit route on what became the game-winner – a 45-yard touchdown in which Hodge bigfooted Tampa Bay cornerback Zyon McCollum, and then ran through most of the rest of the defense.

“I’ve played a lot of football,” Cousins said postgame. “That one is going go down as a memorable one. Man coverage, not an ideal route for man coverage, so I was expecting to progress backside. But the corner didn’t attach as fast as I thought he would. I thought, you know what? I’ll just drill it on him, avoid a sack, get out of Dodge, and move to second- or third-and-4. Put the ball in his outside half because I felt the corner drive it on his inside half. He pulls out of it, and I was just kind of standing back there. We call him [Hodge] Red. I said, “Go, Red, go.

“Man coverage, he’s able to split the defense. At that point there is a reason we have him on our football team. He can pull away from people. What an unbelievable play. When we won the toss, when we kicked the field goal to go to overtime the narrative was on the sideline, we score a touchdown, game over. I thought, well, yeah, but you guys are acting like it’s easy to go down and score a touchdown. With the way Red did it, I guess they were right. That was fun.”

Indeed it was if you’re a Falcons fan. Or Hodge himself, who was just waiting for his chance, and for somebody to believe in him.

“It’s big,” Hodge said. “Coming from an HBCU, Prairie View, it’s a tough road. You’re fighting every year for a roster spot [as a] fourth and fifth receiver. Just to get out of the mud, you got to… and I’m about to get out of the mud every day. You take advantage of every opportunity, whether it’s on teams or whether it’s on offense, but you just have to have that mindset not to quit, because adversity is going to hit and you just have to keep going.”

Khalen Saunders, DI, New Orleans Saints

You never know when events will conspire perfectly for a great story, but we certainly got that on Monday night when the New Orleans Saints took on the Kansas City Chiefs. Defensive tackle Khalen Saunders, who was selected by the Chiefs in the third round of the 2019 draft out of Western Illinois (Go Leathernecks!), subsequently signed a three-year, $12.3 million contract with the Saints in 2022, had an amazing two-play sequence late in the third quarter of the game right about the time that ESPN informed us that Saunders’ brother Kameron is a backup dancer for Taylor Swift, who is of some renown to Chiefs fans.

With 2:30 left in the third quarter, the Chiefs had the ball at the New Orleans five-yard line. Patrick Mahomes tried a little shovel pass to Travis Kelce, Ms. Swift’s partner. Saunders smashed into Kelce at the 2-yard line, and that play was over. Then, Mahomes tried to hit JuJu Smith-Schuster in the end zone, and the 6’0, 324-pound Saunders had a pick that he returned 37 yards to the New Orleans 35-yard line.

Not a bad sequence!

In the Saints’ 26-13 loss, Saunders had two solo tackles, five assisted tackles, with that key red zone stop, and the pick that ended the drive. Moreover, it was recently revealed that Saunders might have been directly or indirectly responsible for Swift and Kelce getting together in the first place.

What better stairway to greatness can one have in the National Football League?

Logan Hall, DL, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

We’ve already gone over the details of Tampa Bay’s heartbreaking overtime loss to the Falcons, but one bright spot for head coach Todd Bowles was the play of defensive lineman Logan Hall, selected in the second round of the 2022 draft out of Houston. The 6’6, 283-pound Hall had three sacks and 17 total pressures in his rookie campaign, upped his total pressures to 18 with no sacks in 2023, and did have a sack against the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 4, but it’s safe to say that few people expected Hall to go off against Atlanta’s offensive line as he did, with two sacks, seven total pressures, and two stops.

Whether he was on the edge testing multiple blockers to get to Kirk Cousins, or working protections on overload blitzes, Hall was a wrecking ball all over the defensive line.

“Yeah, it is sustainable,” Bucs head coach Todd Bowles said Friday. “He’s coming on. We always knew he was a good athlete, but it took time to get his pass rush things down. He does a lot of talking to Vita [Vea], he did a lot of talking to [Calijah] Kancey on the sideline, of how to try to attack these guys and what he wants to do with them – less swim technique and more hands to power and then he’s using his moves at the end and his athleticism. I think it’s sustainable. I think he’s coming on every week, and he sees it now, so that’s giving him more confidence and we just look forward to him getting better.”

If Hall has taken that proverbial next step, it’s all the better for Tampa Bay’s defense.

Frankie Luvu, LB, Washington Commanders

The Carolina Panthers were an abject disaster in 2023, but there was one Panther who was always appointment viewing, regardless. That was linebacker Frankie Luvu, the 2018 undrafted free agent out of Washington State who played pretty well for the New York Jets for three seasons, and then really blew up as an under-the-radar star with Carolina starting in 2022. That was the first of two seasons in which Luvu recorded seven sacks, with 23 total pressures in 2022 and 20 in 2023, and some obvious improvement in coverage over time.

By the time he hit free agency in the 2024 offseason, Luvu was coveted enough to get himself a three-year, $31 million contract with $14.625 million guaranteed.

“Frankie just jumps off the tape — the way he plays, his play style, his mindset, his mentality,” Commanders general manager Adam Peters said in March. “I didn’t know much about Frankie other than watching him play and saying, ‘I want that guy on my team.’ But you do research, and all his teammates absolutely love him. He’s a great leader.”

Both on and off the field, Luvu has been a boss for a while now, and the rest of the NFL is catching up. The Cleveland Browns certainly had insight to Luvu’s greatness after he blew up their offense for three sacks, two quarterback hurries, three stops, and total frenzy from all over the defense – 41 snaps in the box, 15 on the defensive line, and three in the slot. It’s par for the course for Luvu, who has become one of the NFL’s better do-it-all linebackers, and has been fortified in Dan Quinn’s defense.

After Washington’s 34-13 thrashing of the Browns on Sunday, Luvu got a well-deserved game ball from Quinn, and he celebrated in his own unique fashion, with the team all the way behind him.

Riley Moss, CB, Denver Broncos

As we have already discussed, Iowa’s offense is easy fodder for jokesters. But Iowa’s defense is another matter (it kinda has to be), and cornerback Riley Moss – selected by the Denver Broncos with the 84th overall pick in the third round of the 2023 draft – has started to take his outstanding collegiate exploits to the NFL with authority.

Against the Las Vegas Raiders in a 34-21 Sunday win that sent Denver to 3-2 on the season, the Hawkeyes alum was a lockdown guy on the other side of Patrick Surtain II, who was creating his own nightmares for Raiders quarterbacks with two interceptions. Moss was targeted six times, allowing three catches for 34 yards, 5 yards after the catch, no touchdowns, one interception, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 27.8. Moss didn’t play a lot in his rookie season, and he’s been up and down in Year 2, but this was his best game to date.

“One of the tough things sometimes when drafting a player out of college is you see him in maybe a couple of schemes,” Broncos head coach Sean Payton said of Moss and his NFL transition on Monday. “Riley, they played a lot of Quarters at Iowa, and they played it well. They’re well-coached on defense. Then they’d mix in some other coverages. So then you’re projecting, ‘When they get to this level, how will they be in man, how will they be in these other coverages?’ I would say this training camp, we saw it all camp. So it wasn’t really a surprise. His ability to stay in phase man-to-man. Then he has really good speed and really good length. Then factor that in with makeup, and [he] competes. You don’t know how that’s going to translate into other coverages at our level. Fortunately for us, it’s translated very well.”

It has, and given Moss’ skill set, he appears to be ready for the challenge of multiple targets at the hands of quarterbacks who have learned to avoid Surtain no matter what.