It’s been a big week for Bucs veteran outside linebacker Anthony Nelson. He not only played his 100th game in the pros, but he stepped in and started it with Haason Reddick sidelined due to an injury. And Nelson didn’t just start in Tampa Bay’s Week 8 win over New Orleans at the Superdome – he starred in it.

Nelson’s big day started with a forced fumble that ended the Saints’ first drive. Later in the first half, he picked up the Bucs’ struggling offense by taking matters into his own hands with a pick-six off of Spencer Rattler. The long-armed pass rusher disrupted the pass, tipped it to himself and shoved Rattler to the ground as he made the short 4-yard return to give Tampa Bay a 7-0 lead.

Bucs OLB Anthony Nelson and DTs Vita Vea, Logan Hall and Elijah Roberts – Photo by: USA Today

And Nelson wasn’t done, either, as the seventh-year pass rusher racked up two sacks to finish with a gaudy stat line of two sacks, a forced fumble and a pick-six.

So, it was a shock to absolutely no one when Nelson was named NFC Defensive Player of the Week for Week 8 on Wednesday.

This marks Nelson’s first NFC Defensive Player of the Week award, and he becomes the second Buccaneer defender to win the weekly award in the month of October. After Tampa Bay’s 30-19 win over San Francisco on Oct. 12, cornerback Jamel Dean was named the NFC Defensive Player of the Week for Week 6. For both guys, it was the first time in their respective careers that they’ve won the award.

Along with Nelson’s honor, kicker Chase McLaughlin was named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week for Week 8 as well. Nelson and McLaughlin are the third and fourth Tampa Bay players to earn NFC weekly awards this season, joining Dean and return man Kameron Johnson, who was named NFC Special Teams Player of the Week after the Bucs’ Week 1 win over the Falcons.

Week 8 Award The Latest Addition To Anthony Nelson’s Bucs Résumé

Anthony Nelson has been a career reserve in Tampa Bay since being drafted in the fourth round of the 2019 NFL Draft. But there’s a reason he has signed two separate contract extensions with the team since his initial rookie deal wrapped up. Not only has he served as a solid, “steady Eddie” type of rotational pass rusher, but he simply has a knack for making big plays when the Bucs need them.

Whether it was a key forced fumble in a win over the Panthers during his rookie year, a sack of Taylor Heinicke on the Bucs’ run to Super Bowl LV, his back-to-back weeks with key sack-fumbles to help Tampa Bay clinch the NFC South in 2022, his pressure of Jalen Hurts that resulted in an intentional grounding call for a safety in a playoff win in January 2024 or his season-saving forced fumble in overtime of a road win over the Panthers last year, Nelson has come through time and again for Todd Bowles’ defense.

Now, add the best all-around game of his career to the résumé that seems to grow more and more impressive by the year.

Bucs OLB Anthony Nelson and ILB SirVocea Dennis and Saints QB Spencer Rattler – Photo by: USA Today

“He’s a good ball player. We always talk about Nelly all the time,” Bowles said after Sunday’s win. “He never shows up athletically, but he’s always in the right place at the right time. He’s a very aggressive player, he’s a very smart player. He has not [fallen] for a bootleg yet, he has great anticipation when he batted the ball up. He’s a very good athlete and he can catch the ball very well. Nelly had a heck of a ball game. And once he catches the ball, there’s nobody that’s going to catch him when he sprints 1 yard.”

Nelson’s forced fumble, which was recovered by Lavonte David, and his pick-six got the takeaways going for Tampa Bay on Sunday. After those two, the defense added two more, courtesy of Jamel Dean and Antoine Winfield Jr. Dean forced a fumble that Winfield recovered before Winfield later grabbed the fourth takeaway of the day when he ripped the ball away from Chris Olave for an interception of Tyler Shough.

“You definitely get in that zone. I think a lot of it has to do with the guys around you,” Nelson said after the game. “I punched the ball out, but we had a lot of guys going after the ball, getting strips, punching at the catch, even some that were close that ended up being incompletions. So, when everybody’s doing it, it kind of gets contagious. You can feel it, it gives you confidence and everybody joins in on it. So, it feels good to do.”